How to suppress a value with ( ) ? : ;

[Claus Mygind]

I want to suppress the e: in the code below when the content of the email column is blank. I have tried several different methods and can not figure out why I always get the "e: "

the condition always returns false even when the the content of the email column is blank/empty or whatever you want to call it.

where is my coding error?

... some more data added to $cVal
$cVal .= ( (empty($c["EMAIL"]))?"": (" e: ".$c["EMAIL"]) );
 
echo $cVal;
 

[dlite922]

var_dump($c["EMAIL").

What do you get?

If there's a space in there, empty will return false and thus tack on "e:" to your space to get "e: " as the final value in $cVal.


Dan

[Claus Mygind]

Ok most likely there is a blank space. in my dBase a blank " " is still considered empty.

How do I test for empty in php where there may or may not be a blank?

[dlite922]

Use Trim():

$cVal .= empty(trim($c["EMAIL"])) ? "" : " e: ${c["EMAIL"]}";
 

Trim will remove any extra spaces in the front and back. If all you have is space, then of course it will return an empty string ("").

Cheers,


Dan

[Claus Mygind]

Have not had the chance to test this out yet so cannot report on best answer just now.