Get Post’s Excerpt Without the Wrapping tags and the Read More link

by

You can try this one:

$string ='<p>LOREM IPSUM!&hellip; <a href="http://localhost/post/3" class="read-more">Read More</a></p>';
$string = preg_replace('/<a[^>]*(.*?)<\/a>/s', '', $string);
echo wp_strip_all_tags($string);

//return LOREM IPSUM!…