Truncate string on whole words in .NET C#

Try the following. It is pretty rudimentary. Just finds the first space starting at the desired length.

public static string TruncateAtWord(this string value, int length) {
    if (value == null || value.Length < length || value.IndexOf(" ", length) == -1)
        return value;

    return value.Substring(0, value.IndexOf(" ", length));
}

Thanks for your answer Dave. I've tweaked the function a bit and this is what I'm using ... unless there are any more comments ;)

public static string TruncateAtWord(this string input, int length)
{
    if (input == null || input.Length < length)
        return input;
    int iNextSpace = input.LastIndexOf(" ", length, StringComparison.Ordinal);
    return string.Format("{0}…", input.Substring(0, (iNextSpace > 0) ? iNextSpace : length).Trim());
}

My contribution:

public static string TruncateAtWord(string text, int maxCharacters, string trailingStringIfTextCut = "…")
{
    if (text == null || (text = text.Trim()).Length <= maxCharacters) 
      return text;

    int trailLength = trailingStringIfTextCut.StartsWith("&") ? 1 
                                                              : trailingStringIfTextCut.Length; 
    maxCharacters = maxCharacters - trailLength >= 0 ? maxCharacters - trailLength 
                                                     : 0;
    int pos = text.LastIndexOf(" ", maxCharacters);
    if (pos >= 0)
        return text.Substring(0, pos) + trailingStringIfTextCut;

    return string.Empty;
}

This is what I use in my projects, with optional trailing. Text will never exceed the maxCharacters + trailing text length.