Question

This is more of underlying PHP execution question.

What are the positives or negatives to the two following methods for limiting string size?

function max_length($string, $length) {   return (strlen($string) > $length)?substr($string, 0, $length):$string; }  substr($string, 0, $length); 

The case I am worried about is when the string is smaller than the length requested. Can it cause buffer overflow errors? Extra whitespace? Repeated characters?

The only thing I do know is that speed-wise, substr is at least 2x faster than the custom function provided.

Answer 1

As you can see in https://www.php.net/substr

 If length  is given and is positive, the string returned will contain **at most** length  characters beginning from start  (depending on the length of string ).  

That means you won’t get any extra characters, just the ones you’re asking for.