How to add ... after # of characters?

[JohnSaunders]

Can somebody tell me how to add ... after a certain number of characaters that are pulled from a column in a MySQL database?

I've tried this but for some reason it isn't working:

LEFT('entry_excerpt', 40) as excerpt

[ToolboxTech]

If you are using PHP, you can use this function I wrote a few years back:

function shorten ($text, $charcount)
{
    $text = substr($text, 0, $charcount);
    $lastchar = substr($text, -1, 1);
    if ($lastchar != '.')
    {
        $text .= '...';
    }
    return $text;
} 

[r937]

you can do it with mysql too

select concat(left(acolumn,40),'...') as excerpt, ...

you can also use CASE to check the length first so that if the value itself is less than 40 you don't concat the dots