mb_str_pad()

mb_str_pad() — Pad a multibyte string to a certain length with another multibyte string.

Built-in function of PHP 8.5. The manual lists it as available in PHP 8 >= PHP 8.3.0. This page is the reference card: signature, parameters and return value, plus the changelog and the example the manual provides.

What it does

This function returns the string padded on the left, the right, or both sides to the specified padding length, where the length is measured in Unicode codepoints. If the optional argument pad_string is not supplied, the string is padded with spaces, otherwise it is padded with characters from pad_string up to the limit.

Signature

mb_str_pad(string $string, int $length, string $pad_string = " ", int $pad_type = STR_PAD_RIGHT, ?string $encoding = null): string

Parameters

Parameter	Type	What it takes
$string	string	The input string.
$length	int	If the value of length is negative, less than, or equal to the length of the input string, no padding takes place, and string will be returned.
$pad_string	string	The pad_string may be truncated if the required number of padding characters can't be evenly divided by the pad_string's length.
$pad_type	int	Optional argument pad_type can be STR_PAD_RIGHT, STR_PAD_LEFT, or STR_PAD_BOTH. By default STR_PAD_RIGHT.
$encoding	?string	The encoding parameter is the character encoding. If it is omitted or null, the internal character encoding value will be used.

Return value

Returns the padded string.

Example

A runnable snippet:

var_dump(mb_str_pad('▶▶', 6, '❤❓❇', STR_PAD_RIGHT)); // string(18) "▶▶❤❓❇❤" var_dump(mb_str_pad('▶▶', 6, '❤❓❇', STR_PAD_LEFT)); // string(18) "❤❓❇❤▶▶" var_dump(mb_str_pad('▶▶', 6, '❤❓❇', STR_PAD_BOTH)); // string(18) "❤❓▶▶❤❓" var_dump(mb_str_pad("🎉", 3, "祝", STR_PAD_LEFT)); // string(10) "祝祝🎉"

All PHP 8.5 built-in functions

Reference card built from the PHP manual page mb_str_pad() (PHP documentation, CC BY 3.0). The page is generated from the manual, so the wording of the parameter and return value text follows php.net.