padding strings

Anon

I have a form that the user enters in
for example, their first name and presses
the submit button.

My php3 code is suppose to take the
FirstName variable and right pad it with
spaces up to a length specified by me.

I have written a function that right
pads the FirstName variable, but only
if I don't attempt to use " " - it
works if I use say "@" char.

Below is my code.

Can someone please tell me why I can't
right pad with spaces?

function RightPadString($sTemp, $iMaxLength)
{
$iCount = 0;
$iLength = strlen($sTemp);
$sFixed = "";
$sPadding = "";
$sSpace = Chr(31);

for ($iCount = $iLength; $iCount < $iMaxLength; $iCount++)
{
	$sPadding .= $sSpace;
}

$sFixed = $sTemp . $sPadding;

return $sFixed;

}

cordex

Your code works perfectly. Your problem is that most browsers don't parse more then one space when dealing with HTML. So, if you want it to actually display spaces, change this:
$sSpace = Chr(31);
to this:
$sSpace = " ";

Anon

A space is decimal 32 on my ASCII chart. You can just use " " instead. And you can use str_repeat if you have PHP 4.

function RightPadString($sTemp, $iMaxLength)
{
$sTempLength = strlen($sTemp);
if($sTempLength < $iMaxLength)
return $sTemp . str_repeat(" ", $iMaxLength - $sTempLength);

return $sTemp;
}

smarlowe

Just put your output between a <pre> </pre> pair and you'll be able to see the text formatted with the extra spaces, or replace the spaces with   which is a non-breaking space.

Phorum's probably gonna eat my html / entity encoding...

smarlowe

Yeah, it ate my nonbreaking space... should be:

& n b s p ;

without the extra spaces in it.

Here's an example, (do a view source to see the code)

hello     there

cordex

Actually, Scott, it ate mine too. Kathy, what I meant for the new line to read was:
$sSpace = "&_nbsp;"; just take the underscore out.

Terribly sorry,
Ben

Anon

Why do you need to right-pad this first name entry to begin with?

Perhaps your "coding" problem is more one of a "design" or DB mis-design issue.

Just curious.

kparker

just write it like this: &amp;nbsp;

Anon

Thanks for the help - now it works!!!