PHP

Formatting Strings

There are two functions to format data for display:

printf(format [, args]): It prints a formatted string to the browser.
sprintf(format [, args]): It returns a formatted string.

The format string is composed of zero or more directives: characters that are copied directly to the result, and conversion specifications. Each conversion specification consists of a percent sign (%), followed by one or more of these elements, in order:

An optional padding specifier that indicates which character should be used to pad the results to the correct string size.This may be a space character or a 0. The default is to pad with spaces.
An optional alignment specifier that indicates whether the results should be left-justified or right-justified. The default is right-justified (a - character here will make it left-justified).
An optional number, the width specifier, specifying how many characters (minimum) this conversion should result in.
An optional precision specifier that indicates how many decimal digits should be displayed for floating-point numbers.
A type specifier that says what type the argument data should be treated as.

Specifier	Description
%	A literal percent character. No argument is required.
b	Display an integer as a binary number.
c	Display an integer as ASCII equivalent.
d	Display an integer as a (signed) decimal number.
u	Display an integer as an unsigned decimal number.
f	Display an integer as a floating-point number (double).
o	Display an integer as an octal number (base 8).
s	Display argument as a string.
x	Display an integer as a lowercase hexadecimal number (base 16).
X	Display an integer as an uppercase hexadecimal number (base 16).

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="EN" lang="EN">
<head>
<title>PHP</title>
<meta Name="Author" Content="Hann So">
</head>
<body>
<p>
<?php
$number = 1234;
printf ("Binary: %b<br />", $number);
printf ("Character: %c<br />", $number);
printf ("Decimal: %d<br />", $number);
printf ("Floating-point: %f<br />", $number);
printf ("Floating-point: %.2f<br />", $number);
printf ("Octal: %o<br />", $number);
printf ("String: %s<br />", $number);
printf ("Hex: %x<br />", $number);
printf ("Hex: %X<br /><br />", $number);

$fruits = array('apples' => 0.75, 'pears' => 1.10, 'oranges' => 0.33);
printf("The prices are \$%.2f for apples, \$%.2f for pears,
and \$%.2f for oranges.<br />", $fruits[apples], $fruits[pears], $fruits[oranges]);
echo "<p>Another way of printing:</p>";
// %6.2 means that a floating point number will be given 4 places in the display
// with two places behind the decimal point.
echo "<pre>";
printf("\$%4.2f<br />", $fruits[apples]);
printf("\$%4.2f<br />", $fruits[pears]);
printf("\$%4.2f<br />", $fruits[oranges]);
echo "</pre>";

echo "<p>Format the output:</p>";
echo "<pre>";
// %-20s defnes a width specifier of 20 characters with the output to be left-justified.
// %20s sets up a right-aligned field with of 20 characters.
printf("%-20s%20s<br />", "Name", "Price");
// %'=40s draws a line containg = characters for 40 characters wide.
printf("%'=40s<br />", "");
foreach ($fruits as $key=>$val) {
	printf("%-18s%19.2f<br />", $key, $val);
}
echo "</pre>";
echo "<p>Format the output using sprintf():</p>";
$output = sprintf("The prices are \$%.2f for apples, \$%.2f for pears,
and \$%.2f for oranges.<br />", $fruits[apples], $fruits[pears], $fruits[oranges]);
echo $output;
?>
</p>
</body>
</html>

View the effect