PHP - Is there a quick, on-the-fly method to test for a single character string, then prepend a leading zero?
Example:
$year = 11;
$month = 4;
$stamp = $year.add_single_zero_if_needed($month); // Imaginary function
echo $stamp; // 1104
You can use sprintf: http://php.net/manual/en/function.sprintf.php
<?php
$num = 4;
$num_padded = sprintf("%02d", $num);
echo $num_padded; // returns 04
?>
It will only add the zero if it's less than the required number of characters.
Edit: As pointed out by @FelipeAls:
When working with numbers, you should use %d
(rather than %s
), especially when there is the potential for negative numbers. If you're only using positive numbers, either option works fine.
For example:
sprintf("%04s", 10);
returns 0010
sprintf("%04s", -10);
returns 0-10
Where as:
sprintf("%04d", 10);
returns 0010
sprintf("%04d", -10);
returns -010