Question

I want to create a function to check if the length of a string is greater than or less than a required amount:

Something like this:

function check_string_lenght($string, $min, $max)
{
 if ($string == "")
 {
   return x;   
 }
 elseif (strlen($string) > $max)
 {
   return y;
 } 
 elseif (strlen($string) < $min)
 {
   return z;
 }
 else
 {
   return $string;
 }

}

The problem is I don’t know what to return. I don’t want to return something like ‘String is too short’. Maybe a number, 0 if == "", 1 if greater than, 2 if less than?

What would be the proper way of doing this?

Answer 1

You can return 1, 0 and -1 like a lot of comparison functions do. In this case the return values could have these meanings:

• 0: The string length is inside the bounds
• -1: too short
• 1: too long

I don’t think there is a proper way for this. You just have to document and explain the return values.