Removing the […] from the excerpt returned by get_the_excerpt() only in some places

Question

I wish to use the excerpt of a post in the meta description for better SEO, so I am using the get_the_excerpt() function to get the post's excerpt. However, I noticed that at the end it is adding [...] when the post's content is not separated by the More separator, and when it is longer than the configured maximum length.

Is there a clean way to remove this [...] in the end of the excerpt? The function doesn't seem to have a boolean parameter to specify whether you want it, or anything of that sort.

** UPDATE **

I do not want to remove the [...] from the main index.php. I just want to remove it in certain instances (in the meta description), and leave it in others. So the hook solution does not work in this case.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Don't use get_the_excerpt. Just do something like:

if (is_singular() && isset($post->post_excerpt)) {
    echo '<meta name="description" content="'.esc_attr($post->post_excerpt).'" />';
}

$post is populated long before the Loop. For "single" pages it will be populated with the post to be displayed. You can grab it very early in the page load. For other types of pages-- archives, capital "P" Pages-- it may not have the value you expect, so watch it.

Caveats:

1. That assumes that your posts all have actual excerpts. Nothing will be auto-generated from post content.
2. I have no idea how you theme works. You may need to edit a theme file. You may need to build a function and hook it to a theme hook or to wp_head.

Answer 2

function change_excerpt_more( $more ) {
    return '[.....]';
}
add_filter('excerpt_more', 'change_excerpt_more');

You can replace '[.....]' with whatever you want or with '' for nothing.