Need urgent help with a string formatter.

[gibigbig]

Ok my input is an array.

$episode_number = array('2','99'...'004');

 

where "..." is any amount of values.

 

My aim is to take these values and format them so that they ALWAYS have 3 characters in them by adding Zero's to the beginning. So 2 will become 002 and 99 will become 099 and  004 will remain 004.

I have attempted my code here:

 

for($i=0; $i<$numberlinks; $i++) {
$thecount = strlen($episode_number[i]);
if($thecount == '1'){
$episode_number[i] == '00'.$episode_number[i].'';
} elseif($thecount == '2'){
$episode_number[i] == '0'.$episode_number[i].'';
} else {
$episode_number[i] == $episode_number[i];
}
echo $episode_number[i].'<br />';

}

The above output is 2 <br /> tags. But when i add on osme code to it:

 

	for($i=0; $i<$numberlinks; $i++) {
$thecount = strlen($episode_number[i]);
if($thecount == '1'){
$episode_number[i] == '00'.$episode_number[i].'';
} elseif($thecount == '2'){
$episode_number[i] == '0'.$episode_number[i].'';
} else {
$episode_number[i] == $episode_number[i];
}
echo $episode_number[i].'<br />';

}
	 $query2[] = ("INSERT INTO episodes (anime_id,anime, username, userid, episode_name, episode_number, manga_chapter_link, moderated) VALUES ('".$anime_id[$i]."', '".$anime[$i]."', '".$username."', '".$userid."', '".clean($episode_name[$i])."', '".clean($episode_number[$i])."', '".clean($manga_chapter_link[$i])."','1')");
	}
	foreach ($query2 as $query){
				mysql_query($query) or die (mysql_error());
				echo "<span style='color:green'>Added sucessfully <b>Episode ".++$one."</b> </span><br/>";
		} 

 

the output is the input, ie, 02 remains 02 and not 002. can anyone help me or give me a method that works?

[PFMaBiSmAd]

See - http://php.net/sprintf

 

Use a format specifier of %03d