Padding a string

Padding strings: str_pad()

With the str_pad() function, you can pad (fill with some characters) a string.

To pad a string with spaces until it reaches the length of ten chars:

echo str_pad("Hello", 10) . "-";
// Hello     -

The default is to pad with blank spaces " " at the end of the original string.

If you need to change the default behavior you have the third parameter to define the char for padding.

echo str_pad("Hello", 10, "+");
// Hello+++++

You can also define more chars for padding:

echo str_pad("Hello", 10, "+*");
// Hello+*+*+

You can define the “direction” of the pad with the constant STR_PAD_RIGHT (the default) or STR_PAD_LEFT or STR_PAD_BOTH:

echo str_pad("Hello", 10, "+", STR_PAD_BOTH);
// ++Hello+++