Ndtyjky

I often do things like this on the command line:

<?php



    echo 'Short description:' . "tttttt" . '123' . "n";

    echo 'A slightly longer description:' . "tttttt" . '321' . "n";



?>

These will no longer "match up"; "123" and "321" will not be on the same "column":

This is what I want

This is what I don't want

Is there any sane way to get around this problem? I always used to think that the whole point of the "tabulator" was to achieve this effect, but clearly it's not? Or have I misunderstood it somehow?

Here is one method.

Maybe not as simple as you expected but it works.

I use the full string and find the longest description and use that as the base.

$str = "Short description: t 123

A slightly longer description: t 321";



$arr = explode ("n", $str);

foreach($arr as $line){

    // Create new array with str_len as one item

    $parts = explode("t", $line);

    $new = ['desc' => $parts[0], 'num' => $parts[1], 'len' => strlen($parts[0])];

}

// Find max length in array

$pad = max(array_column($new, 'len'))+1;



// Output it

foreach($new as $sub){

    echo str_pad($sub['desc'], $pad, " ") . "t" . $sub['num'] . "n";

}

Output:

Short description:                   123

A slightly longer description:       321

https://3v4l.org/s1DAD