I need to be able to format data. Printf() is perfect because I need a certain amount of characters (30 for address). However I need this formatted data to be inside a file that's fwrite() and then FTPed to a distributor who will parse it and input into their database. printf("% 4d",$orderID[0]); does not work in $thisContent=" "data" . "moredate" . "evenmoredata" . "; In effect I need the output of printf() to be placed inside a variable and I don't see how to do that. Str_pad(), of course, does not work. Thx for any hints. mayo