Wordwrap & Order of Code Execution and Display

Rivet

Hi all,
Still a neophyte in many areas of PHP.
Win 7, XAMPP, PHP 5.3, Online forms, textarea manipulation:
This is sort of a 2-parter but they're closely related w/r to what I'm trying to do. I've simplified it to a 1-pager that demoes my situation and it's shown below.

1. First, I've been trying to use
	$comments = wordwrap($comments,40);
. It seems to work OK on the mail() page where I receive the data via e-mail, BUT, on the page that the user sees and also clicks on SEND, it doesn't work. It only "wraps" to the screen width as without the wordwrap; in other words, it doesn't work at all.
But at the same time there are no errors, notices, warnings, et al showing up on my local server and there is nothing in the Apache Error Log.

So I guess my question is, SHOULD it display properly on the mail() page? Which is PHP,BTW. Or is it something like a textarea where maxlength doesn't work?

2. In addition, my other question concerns the sequence of displaying on a PHP Page:
As you can see in the code below, first I assign 3 or 4 variables.
Then below that I issue echoes of each variable.
BUT
What I see is, and I only recently discovered this, is the TOP part of the page shows the PHP echo outputs. Then, below that, the text from each of the var setups.
A. I don't understand why the assignment of VARs is showing at all, I'm a bit confused.
B. And in sequence, why is the PHP set of echoes at the top of the page instead of below the unexpected display of each var assignment, when I of course assign the variables first, and T/HEN execute echo statements?
Hope that makes sense?

I guess what I'm actually asking is, WHERE/HOW, other than experimentation, can I learn more about execution sequences in PHP?

Such an understanding would go a long ways to helping me in my efforts to become proficient with PHP?

<?php
//  VAR setup:
echo "VAR SETUP; Normally these would be from an online form entries : <br />";
$comments = "Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. In posuere felis nec tortor. Pellentesque faucibus. Ut accumsan ultricies elit. Maecenas at justo id velit placerat molestie. <br />";

$zip = "13654";
$email = "nobody@spamcop.net ";


// EXECUTION:
  $email . "<br />";
	echo "zip IS " . $zip . "<br />";
	$comments = wordwrap($comments,40);
	echo " tHE COMMENTS ARE <br />" . $comments . "<br />";

echo "done<br /><br />";

echo "All together now: <br />" . $email . "<br />" . $zip ."<br />" . $comments;


?>

AND, the browser Display (IE and FF):

VAR SETUP; Normally these would be from an online form entries :
zip IS 13654
tHE COMMENTS ARE
Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. In posuere felis nec tortor. Pellentesque faucibus. Ut accumsan ultricies elit. Maecenas at justo id velit placerat molestie.

done

All together now:
nobody@spamcop.net
13654
Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. In posuere felis nec tortor. Pellentesque faucibus. Ut accumsan ultricies elit. Maecenas at justo id velit placerat molestie

TIA,

Rivet`

Weedpacket

For the first part:

It seems to work OK on the mail() page where I receive the data via e-mail, BUT, on the page that the user sees and also clicks on SEND, it doesn't work. It only "wraps" to the screen width as without the wordwrap; in other words, it doesn't work at all.
But at the same time there are no errors, notices, warnings, et al showing up on my local server and there is nothing in the Apache Error Log.

So I guess my question is, SHOULD it display properly on the mail() page? Which is PHP,BTW. Or is it something like a textarea where maxlength doesn't work?

No, it shouldn't; at least, not if you're rendering it as unformatted text in an HTML page. (Try looking at the source code of the page instead of your browser's interpretation of it.)

I guess what I'm actually asking is, WHERE/HOW, other than experimentation, can I learn more about execution sequences in PHP?

Start at the beginning, then go through line by line, jumping to other lines if the PHP statements dictate you do so.

http://www.php.net/manual/en/control-structures.intro.php

For the second part, I don't understand either part of your question. A: the "assignment of VARs" isn't being echoed anywhere. As for B: there are echo statements before your variable assignments because you put them there. And the only echo statements that use the values of variables you assigned to appear after you are below the assignments.

Your code with each line appearing in the order in which it is executed:

```
//  VAR setup:
```
Comment; no functional effect.
```
echo "VAR SETUP; Normally these would be from an online form entries : ";
```
Output the string [font=monospace]VAR SETUP; Normally these would be from an online form entries : [/font].
```
$comments = "Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. In posuere felis nec tortor. Pellentesque faucibus. Ut accumsan ultricies elit. Maecenas at justo id velit placerat molestie. ";
```
Assign the string [font=monospace]Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac turpis egestas. In posuere felis nec tortor. Pellentesque faucibus. Ut accumsan ultricies elit. Maecenas at justo id velit placerat molestie. [/font] as the value for the variable [font=monospace]$comments[/font].
```
$zip = "13654";
```
Assign the string [font=monospace]13564[/font] as the value for the variable [font=monospace]$zip[/font].
```
$email = "nobody@spamcop.net ";
```
Assign the string [font=monospace]nobody@spamcop.net [/font] as the value for the variable [font=monospace]$email[/font].
```
// EXECUTION:
```
Comment; no functional effect.
```
$email . " ";
```
No functional effect - the value of the expression is not output nor assigned to anything.
```
echo "zip IS " . $zip . " ";
```
Output the string made by concatenating the string [font=monospace]zip IS [/font] with the current value of the variable [font=monospace]$zip[/font] and the string [font=monospace] [/font].
```
$comments = wordwrap($comments,40);
```
Apply the [font=monospace][man]wordwrap[/man][/font] function to the current value of the variable [font=monospace]$comments[/font] and assign the resulting value to the variable [font=monospace]$comments[/font].
```
echo " tHE COMMENTS ARE " . $comments . " ";
```
Output the string made by concatenating the string [font=monospace] tHE COMMENTS ARE [/font] with the current value of the variable [font=monospace]$comments[/font] and the string [font=monospace] [/font].
```
echo "done ";
```
Output the string [font=monospace]done [/font].
```
echo "All together now: " . $email . " " . $zip ." " . $comments;
```
Output the string made by concatenating the string [font=monospace]All together now: [/font] with the current value of the variable [font=monospace]$email[/font], the string [font=monospace] [/font], the current value of the variable [font=monospace]$zip[/font], the string [font=monospace] [/font], and the current value of the variable [font=monospace]$comments[/font].

So the net result is that the output consists of:

VAR SETUP; Normally these would be from an online form entries : <br />
zip IS 13654<br /> tHE COMMENTS ARE <br />Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique
senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac
turpis egestas. In posuere felis nec
tortor. Pellentesque faucibus. Ut
accumsan ultricies elit. Maecenas at
justo id velit placerat molestie. <br /><br />done<br /><br />All together now: <br />nobody@spamcop.net <br />13654<br />Pellentesque habitant morbi tristique
senectus et netus et malesuada fames ac
turpis egestas. In posuere felis nec
tortor. Pellentesque faucibus. Ut
accumsan ultricies elit. Maecenas at
justo id velit placerat molestie. <br />

If that's not what you expected, what exactly did you expect, and why?

Rivet

Woof! I can see I made a couple stupid mistakes and will have a couple more questions, too, if you have the time. Unfortunately I am ill so it may be a day or so before I make a full reply; my head's a total mess today! I can also see I should try several of your hints before responding, too.

I'll be back ASAP, rest assured; hope you'll still be available!

Rivet`

dalecosp

Rivet;11032493 wrote:
my head's a total mess today!

Probably not the best time to write code, then. 😉

Of course, we'll try and be forgiving; it's hardly the first time that someone's done that, and likely, it isn't the last either. 😃

Rivet

I thank you very much, weedpacket! What did I expect? lol! Well, now that I understand much better what I did, and your analysis I originally thought it was the assignment of variables that was being displayed and seemingly in reverse order of the code. But it's pretty obvious to me now where I went wrong.

After thinking about your analysis a bit, I finally displayed both the code and the browser display onscreen and captured them to an image. Then, using lines, I drew lines from each code statement to the resulting display line and suddenly it all became clearer to me. The code is only very slightly changed from my original, but if you're interested:
[ATTACH]4943[/ATTACH]
shows what I ended up with to finish my own analysis. It worked well enough I'll keep it in mind for future use, I think.

I also have an app that converts code to a flowchart but it's next to useless in its chart; in particular no names, only IF and ECHO and a few things similar to that.

thanks so much for your participation: If I ever get wise enough to confidentally answer posts here, I will certainly do so. In a few areas I consider myself almost competent but strictly neophytes in most. You guys help out immensely by helping me out when I just can't get my head around my own research.

Best Regards,

Rivet`

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