php linebreak causes string value to disappear - php

Question

I have some php querying and printing the info of a mysql table on a medical recruitment website.
Sometimes the users enter, causing line breaks where I would rather not have them, because
it affects the layout of the rendered HTML table in a way that it shouldn't.
I can trim the strings when they fill in the forms and the data get written into the table, but there's already a lot of data there, so i decided to remove the line breaks on the page
where php reads and prints the results.
i declared one of the strings where this causes trouble as such:
$specialtr = trim($special, "\n");
and then where the html table gets rendered:
echo '<td width="150">' . $specialtr . '</td>';
Here is the whole code:
All the code works, it's only the parts above that I added that now causes the column with $specialtr variable not to print/print as empty.
<form action="selected.php" method="POST">
<table border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" style="width: 98%; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;">
<tr>
<td>
<?php
$dbhost = 'xxx';
$dbuser = 'xxx';
$dbpass = 'xxx';
$dbname = 'xxx';
$conn = mysql_connect($dbhost, $dbuser, $dbpass) or die (mysql_error($conn));
mysql_select_db($dbname) or die(mysql_error($conn));
$specialtr = trim($special, "\n");
echo '<table border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;">';
$query = 'SELECT userid FROM employee
ORDER BY userid ASC';
$result = mysql_query($query, $conn) or die(mysql_error($conn));
$num_entries = mysql_num_rows($result);
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
foreach ($row as $value) {
echo '<tr>';
echo '<td><input type="radio" name="employee" value="' . $row['userid'] . '"/></td>';
echo '<td>Select</td>';
}
}
echo '</tr>';
echo '</table>';
?>
</td>
<td>
<?php
echo '<table border="1" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="2" style="width: 98%; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;">';
echo '<tr>';
$query = 'SELECT userid, name, surname, sex, age, nationality, email, telnr, special FROM employee
ORDER BY userid ASC';
$result = mysql_query($query, $conn) or die(mysql_error($conn));
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
extract($row);
echo '<td>' . $userid . '</td>';
echo '<td>' . $name . '</td>';
echo '<td>' . $surname . '</td>';
echo '<td>' . $sex . '</td>';
echo '<td>' . $age . '</td>';
echo '<td>' . $nationality . '</td>';
echo '<td>' . $email . '</td>';
echo '<td>' . $telnr . '</td>';
echo '<td width="150">' . $specialtr . '</td>';
echo '</tr>';
}
echo '</table>';
?>
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<br/>
<br/>
<input type="submit" name="go" value="Go!" />
</form>
The code worked well enough, but since I added the trim, that entire column (the $special column disappears).
I hope maybe someone can tell me why it disappears or if my syntax has a little mistake.

Answer 1

Using extract() like that is a horrible thing. The function should be avoided as a general rule.
Also note that you're doing your trim() call BEFORE $special is defined, so your $specialtr variable is going to be an empty string. Calling the function before you start fetching your database results and extracting a result row into $special will not magically apply trim() to reach row you've fetched. If you want the results to be trimmed as you fetch them, then you have to apply the trim AFTER you do the fetch:
while ($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) {
echo '<td>' . $row['userid'] . '</td>';
...
echo '<td width="150">' . trim($row['special']) . '</td>';
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
}