Does anyone have any ideas on why this won't work? I'm pulling a variables from the DB and I want to display them in a list evenly spaced out. But the str_pad function does not seem to be working so I must be doing something wrong:

PHP Code:

    // Display member list for private message selection
    while ($row_add = mysql_fetch_array($result_add))
    {   
        echo ('<option value="'.$row_add['user_id'].'">'.str_pad($row_add['username'],35).' | '.str_pad($row_add['storename'], 25).' | '.str_pad($row_add['companyname'], 25).'</option>');
    } 


matt,

The problem is not with PHP, but with your browser and HTML in general. The spaces are there, but remember that browsers ignore extra spaces and line feeds and are doing so here.

Try this code:

PHP Code:

echo ('<option value="' .$row_add['user_id'].'">' 
       . padWithHTMLSpaces($row_add['username'],35). ' | ' 
       . padWithHTMLSpaces($row_add['storename'], 25). ' | ' 
       . padWithHTMLSpaces($row_add['companyname'], 25) 
       . '</option>'); 


// You'll need this little function
function padWithHTMLSpaces( $szin, $targetLength )
{
    $szout = str_pad( $szin, $targetLength, " ", STRING_PAD_RIGHT );
    return str_replace( " ", "&nbsp;", $szout );
} 


Hope this helps.