Truncate Long Lines: Cutting 500-Character Log Lines Down to 80
Anything past 80 characters on a line is replaced with an ellipsis, and shorter lines pass through untouched. The limit counts characters, not bytes or display width, so one Chinese character or kana counts as one and mixed-script lines stay predictable.
Open the tool：Truncate Long Lines
When truncation is what you want
Pulling a stack trace out of a server log often drags along a single JSON line thousands of characters long, which turns into a wall of wrapped text in a ticket. Cutting each line at 80 characters keeps one line per screen row, and the part that matters, the error message at the front, stays visible.
Another case is sending a CSV or scraped article to someone for a summary. Truncating keeps the original line count, so people can still refer to line 12, and an over-long line no longer stretches the chat window or the spreadsheet cell.
- Pasting log and error output into a ticket
- Previewing CSV rows several hundred characters long
- Showing text while keeping the original line count
How to truncate without breaking trust
The limit is fixed at 80 characters, counted as characters rather than bytes or display width. Eighty Chinese characters and eighty Latin letters both fill the limit, so a Chinese line is not cut early just because it occupies two columns; in a terminal or chat window it may still wrap, since CJK glyphs are wider.
There is no word-boundary detection: the cut lands exactly at character 80, so an English word, a URL, or a JSON key can be sliced in half. The result is for reading, not for reuse, so when you need to copy an ID, a path, or an amount out of it, go back to the original data.
- Fixed at 80 characters, not configurable
- English words, URLs, and JSON can be cut mid-token
- Go back to the source whenever an exact value matters
Where it stops, and what to use instead
Truncation is one-way. Whatever followed the ellipsis is gone from the result, so a copied output cannot be restored. Never apply it to your only copy, and never re-import a truncated CSV into a system: the columns are shorter and the data is wrong.
For word-aware or display-width-aware cutting you need something else. Soft wrap plus manual breaks in an editor handles the first; the second has to account for East Asian character widths. If the goal is a smaller file rather than a shorter view, compress or archive it instead of deleting content.
- Truncation cannot be undone; do not overwrite the original
- Do not re-import a truncated CSV
- Word-aware or width-aware cutting needs another tool
FAQ
Why 80 characters, and can I change it to 100?
The limit is fixed at 80 for now and there is no length control on the page. For another width, truncate here first and adjust in an editor, or split long lines at punctuation before deciding how much to keep. Eighty is roughly the width that avoids horizontal scrolling in most ticket and chat layouts.
Does it cut English words in half?
Yes. The tool counts characters and ignores word boundaries, so if character 80 falls inside a word you get something like configur… with the rest gone. When readability matters, paste the result into an editor and repair the broken words, or use an editor that wraps on word boundaries.
Can I recover the original text after truncating?
No. Everything after the ellipsis has been removed from the output, so copying it back cannot restore the line. Keep the original log or file, and re-read from the source whenever you need the full content rather than trusting a truncated copy.
Related tool：Truncate Long Lines