Get only a number of chars from field and concat '...'

if long field is empty return nothing
if long field is less than number return field
else return number of chars in field and '...'

The following program was written for my company's time keeping system which utilizes an LDAP database for authentication and a MySQL database for time-keeping, account access control, etc.

If a user has >= 5 unsuccessful logins, it locks the account for 5 minutes. Once a successful LDAP bind has occured, the $_SESSION vars are set and the authorization process is bypassed until the user logs out or the session expires.