str_replace whitespace

[lulubell]

Hey there

I'm trying to generate a username (retailer_user) and password (retailer_pass) from the first name and date. A user enters their first, surname and company into a form, on submit I have this code before adding to the db:

str_replace(" ", "", $first);
$first=htmlspecialchars($first);

str_replace(" ", "", $surname);
$surname=htmlspecialchars($surname);
$new_retailer = strtolower($first);
$retailer_user = $new_retailer;
$passtime = gmdate("Hi");
$retailer_pass = $new_retailer.$passtime;

This does work by generating a username and password, but if the user typed in their first name with a space after it, it would return something like:

lulubell 1215

and not

lulubell1215

Any ideas of where I am going wrong??:bemused:

[TheDefender]

You may also want to run the variable through the [man]trim[/man] function as well to stripp off whitespace at the front and back of the variable.

[laserlight]

Your str_replace() does nothing at all.
You need to assign the returned value of str_replace() to a variable, in this case the argument to str_replace() itself.

$first = str_replace(" ", "", $first);

Once you do that, additionally using trim() is redundant since the removal of spaces would take care of that.

[lulubell]

Thanks for the above - it works

I really appreciate your help - I now know about the trim() function - which is what I've been looking through all of my books for, and I now know how to use str_replace() properly

So thanks muchly