substr() on part an ereg() capture

Hi, I have this ereg to turn URLs into links: eregi_replace("([[:alnum:]]+)://([^[:space:]]*)([[:alnum:]#?/&=])", "<a href=\"\\1://\\2\\3\" {$t}\">\\1://\\2\\3</a>", $str); ... found it in the manual i think, or maybe on weberdev.com examples Anyhoo, it places the whole link in between the <a...> and </a>, which is fine for short links, but on longer links (in my case, around 60+ chars), it messes with my table or CSS layout. So, I'd like to subtr() the 2nd capture part down to 55 chars or something IF it's longer than 60, and append a ... to it. ANY ideas on how this is done? Or is this beyond regexp?? TIA Justin