Page 123 - Beginning PHP 5.3

Chapter 5: Strings

Figure 5 - 2

H ow I t W orks
The script starts by displaying an XHTML page header, then defining a variable, $myText , containing the
text to justify. The text is included in the script using the heredoc syntax. (The extra blank line at the end
of the text ensures that the last line of the text has a newline character at the end of it; this is required by
the algorithm that the script uses.)
After defining $myText , the script uses str_replace() to convert any Windows line endings
(a carriage return followed by a line feed) into UNIX line endings (a line feed on its own). Windows
line endings can occur if the script file was saved on a Windows machine, and they can confuse the
justification algorithm (which expects each line to end with just a line feed):

$myText = str_replace( “\r\n”, “\n”, $myText );
Next, the script sets a few more variables:

❑ $lineLength : The desired length that you ’ d like each line of text to be. Try changing this to
different values to see what happens
❑ $myTextJustified : This will contain the final, justified text

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