trim

[themanwhowas]

i have this to test if a field has been filled in.

if (isset ($_REQUEST['name']))
	{$name=trim($_REQUEST['name']);}
else
	{$name="NULL";}



if ($name==NULL)
	{echo "enter your name ";}
else
	{echo "hello $name ";}

acording to my book,

if (!empty($_REQUEST['name']))
	{$name=$_REQUEST['name'];}

is the way to do the same thing. apart from the extra 4 letters in the first example, is there any difference in the usage of these 2 bits of code? the book doesnt mention anything about it. im sure that there are many ways to do things in php but is it just down to personal preference?

[void_function]

Yeah, trim() removes spaces at the beginning and end of the string, effectively emptying the string if only spaces are inserted, which is usually an invalid post. Also, checking for empty of a nonexistent field (if the script was called without the variable set) will yield an error - noncritical but enough to fill logs with junk if not attended.

[themanwhowas]

void_function wrote:

checking for empty of a nonexistent field (if the script was called without the variable set) will yield an error - noncritical but enough to fill logs with junk if not attended.

am i to asume that this does not happen with !blank()?

[void_function]

I never heard of blank() evaluator.... perhaps you mean empty()? In which case, just checked the manual and it says:

empty() is the opposite of (boolean) var, except that no warning is generated when the variable is not set.

So, I was wrong, it won't shoot an error if the field is not set. For some reason I was convinced in the opposite.

Still, var with only (white)spaces is not considered empty, so a trim is in order.

[themanwhowas]

so empty is pretty useless

$name=trim($_REQUEST['name']);


if ($name==NULL)
	{echo "hello noname ";}
else
	{echo "hello $name ";}

this does the lot with about half of the code. i expect i can keep an eye on the error logs
thanks for the help

[suntra]

I would replace...

$name=trim($_REQUEST['name']);

... with ...

$name=trim(@$_REQUEST['name']);

So no warning will be echoed (if error_reporting is set to E_ALL)