Str_pad not working

Question

    **PHP**

    $datearr = explode("/", $cutOff);
    $month = $datearr[0];
    $day = $datearr[1];
    $year = $datearr[2];
    $mainten = "MAINTENANCE";
    $pad=' ';
    $maint = str_pad($mainten, 20, $pad);
    $string = $cduid . $maint . $inarea . $year . $month . $day . "\n";

I am trying to parse this string to a server and $maint has to be padded with spaces to the right. I have also tried.....

    $datearr = explode("/", $cutOff);
    $month = $datearr[0];
    $day = $datearr[1];
    $year = $datearr[2];
    $mainten = "MAINTENANCE";
    $maint = str_pad($mainten, 20);
    $string = $cduid . $maint . $inarea . $year . $month . $day . "\n";

When I echo $string $maint only has 1 space on the right. If I replace $pad=' '; with $pad='.'; I get the correct result but I need for it to be spaces.

What am I missing here?

Answer 1

In HTML you can have only one space shown, but normally in source there are count of spaces, as you wish.

&nbps; will not work with str_pad, because it has 6 characters (in HTML its only 1 character), but for str_pad it will fail.

There is only one way, how to do it, you have to pad some character (ie. ~) and then replace it with  

$maint = str_replace('~', ' ', str_pad($mainten, 20, '~')); // just use some character you know isn't in your string

This will 100% work.

Answer 2

When I echo $string $maint only has 1 space on the right.

The problem is that if you echo your string in HTML code, it will not show all the spaces. If you view source of that page you can see all the spaces added.