Unexpected output when using PDO Fetch - php

Question

I'm hoping somebody knows what is going on with this. I've never seen anything like this before. I'm trying to re-key the results from an indexed array to a keyed array using the value of 'code' in the results as it is a unique key. This happens in both PHP 5.4.16 and PHP 7.0.10
The following code produces very strange output:
$stmt = $conn->prepare( $sql );
$stmt->execute( $params );
$key = 'code';
while($row = $stmt->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)) {
print "Value of $key is '{$row['code']}'\n";
$rows[ ($row['code']) ] = $row;
}
This produces the following output:
'alue of code is '1286
] => Array
(
[code] => 1286
[EmployeeID] =>
[Name] =>
)
Notice how the value of $row['code'] is printed to STDOUT after the single quotes and the V in Value is cut off. This causes my re-keyed array ($rows) to have no key value. I've re-keyed arrays from database results thousands of times before and never had a problem until I started using PDO. Anybody have any ideas?
I simplified the quoting by issuing:
print "Value of $key is '"."{$row[$key]}"."'\n";
which resulted in:
'alue of EmployeeCode is '1286
I am mystified why it's cutting off the 'V' in Value.

Answer 1

I can get similar output without using any database calls this way:
$row = [
'code' => "1286\r",
'EmployeeID' => '',
'Name' => ''
];
print "Value of $key is '{$row['code']}'\n";
$rows[ ($row['code']) ] = $row;
print_r($rows);
Output:
'alue of is '1286
Array
(
] => Array
(
[code] => 1286
[EmployeeID] =>
[Name] =>
)
)
The \r character causes the output cursor to jump to the start of the line, so the ' that's overwriting your 'V' character is actually the second single-quote you're printing.
Likewise, in the strange output of print_r(), the \r is jumping the output cursor to the start of the line, so the ] => Array is overwriting what came before it, which was [1286\r.
I suspect the data in your database contains literal \r characters.