str_pad()

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

Built-in function of PHP 8.5. The manual lists it as available in PHP 4 >= 4.0.1, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8. 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 string padded on the left, the right, or both sides to the specified padding length. 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

str_pad(string $string, int $length, string $pad_string = " ", int $pad_type = STR_PAD_RIGHT): string

Parameters

Parameter	Type	What it takes
$string	string	The input string.
$length	int	The desired length of the final padded string. 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. If pad_type is not specified it is assumed to be STR_PAD_RIGHT.

Return value

Returns the padded string.

Example

A runnable snippet:

$input = "Alien"; echo str_pad($input, 10), PHP_EOL; // produces "Alien " echo str_pad($input, 10, "-=", STR_PAD_LEFT), PHP_EOL; // produces "-=-=-Alien" echo str_pad($input, 10, "_", STR_PAD_BOTH), PHP_EOL; // produces "__Alien___" echo str_pad($input, 6, "___"), PHP_EOL; // produces "Alien_" echo str_pad($input, 3, "*"), PHP_EOL; // produces "Alien"

Changelog

Version	Change
8.0.0	Now throws a ValueError if padding is needed and pad_string is empty or pad_type is invalid. Previously, an E_WARNING was raised and null was returned.