Creating tabs

jphilapy

I am trying to create a tab between database fields using the \t. But when I view the resulting document in a program that shows hidden characters it does'nt show the tab character. Instead it shows something like this:

product_url name description price image_url category offer_id
http://www.discountchristian.com TestProduct This is a test 5.99 http://www.discountchristian.com/images/desc_images/libronix_scholars_library.jpg test category 55

It seems that the '\t' generates tabs using spaces, how can I get PHP to print the other kind of tab which looks like two arrows pointing to the right?

Thanks.
Jeff

daphreeek

why not just use tables? easier and looks better.

HTML doesnt like more than one space or tabs at all and because all server languages must be converted to HTML for the browser to show them, we hav 2 follow HTML's rules

There is 1 thing u can try. Enclose the output in <pre> & </pre> tags and it should display everything in the exact layout as in the source (ie - u dont need <br> tags....)

Hope that helps.
- Matt

jphilapy

why not just use tables? easier and looks better.
<<

Because I need to create a tab delimited csv file so I can upload my data into a third party application that only imports tab delimited files.

Jeff

diego25

how can I get PHP to print the other kind of tab which looks like two arrows pointing to the right?

Huh? A tab is a series of spaces. Some programs let you configure the tab character to be the number of spaces you want, generally 2, 4, or 8. But I've never seen a tab charater that's 2 arrows pointing to the right...

Diego

jphilapy

Well in homesite and similar programs you have the option of using tabs as either a tab character or as spaces. When you turn on the "Show Hidden Characters" option then the tab character is represented as >> whereas the tab as spaces is represented as the amount of spaces you specify as a tab. In anycase there is an obvious difference between tabs as a tab character and tabs as spaces, because there is an ongoing debate in the programming world trying to designate which is better, using tabs as a tab character or tabs as spaces.

so there is a difference. next...

Jeff