[position], [company]

If the position isn’t given, you just output the company. Without, obviously, the comma. It’s a trivial thing to code, but on a current project I’ve found myself doing it in several different places. Of course, this suggests there should be a function written for it.

Ideally the function should be able to cope with any number of optional elements. With PHP’s func_get_args(), it’s easy:

function formatOptionalText( $delimiter ) {
	$elements = array_slice( func_get_args(), 1 );
	$text = "";
	$i = 0;
	foreach ( $elements as $element ) {
		if ( trim ( $element ) ) {
			if ( $i && $text ) $text .= $delimiter;
			$text .= $element;
		}
		$i++;
	}
	return $text;
}

Note that you have to pass a delimiter first, and you should include a space if necessary (e.g. ", "). After that, pass any number of strings and they’ll be output without gaps.

I don’t expect it to be too busy. But when I solve a particularly tricky coding problem, or discover something tremendously useful, I find it a good practice to document it on the web—both for my own future reference and for other poor souls struggling with the same thing.

Comments will be closed because I don’t expect much here apart from spam! There’s always the contact form if you want to respond to something…