[RFC] [VOTE] mb_str_pad

Hi Christian

Am 05.06.2023 um 19:59 schrieb Niels Dossche dossche.niels@gmail.com:

I'm opening the vote now on my proposal to include mb_str_pad() into PHP 8.3.
RFC link: https://wiki.php.net/rfc/mb_str_pad

I voted "No" because I think it should be grapheme_str_pad instead and I'd like to avoid having both the mb_ and grapheme_ versions which unnecessarily confuses users.

I guess I should have spoken up before but I couldn't think of a use case for padding characters instead of graphemes. Or am I missing something?

• Chris

Thanks for explaining, I appreciate that.

String padding is naturally often associated with display. The use-cases I had in mind are rather more related to data formats, protocols and/or standards. Although a lot of users who hand-rolled their own mb_str_pad misuse it for display purposes, there are use-cases that do indeed use it for the purposes I described above. Some random examples I found using GH code search:

• https://github.com/WPPlugins/estonian-banklinks-for-woocommerce/blob/5f97891cfb43d9bde6017243998a3ab424f43b93/includes/gateways/class-wc-banklink-estcard-gateway.php#L139
• https://github.com/ExaByt3s/fodyo/blob/eefdec7da76c820e90987b32baf2aef5ea8d6ca2/bitrix/modules/sale/lib/tradingplatform/vk/feed/data/converters/product.php#L179
• https://github.com/mbence/csaladsegito/blob/20e639b1865ac2ba6be8fc64f69ba9e6f474ef0f/src/JCSGYK/AdminBundle/Services/ClosingService.php#L381

I heard the grapheme argument two times before, one time on the list and one time on Reddit.
I do think it's primarily a documentation problem. One problem may be though that a non-negligible number of users probably don't read documentation. The fact that this comes up again gives me a little bit of fear whether the function would cause confusion. So I'm keeping my ears open for concerns.

For visual purposes I'm also not sure if a grapheme variant would fully suffice, as it would also require the grapheme to be fixed width. But that's another issue of course.

Kind regards
Niels