note 11715 added to str_pad

str_pad will not work inside a regexp. suppose you have a date "3-3-2001" and you would like to get it back as "2001-03-03", the following will NOT work: $newdate = ereg_replace("([0-9]+)-([0-9]+)-([0-9]+)", "\\3-".str_pad("\\2", 2, "0", STR_PAD_LEFT)."-".str_pad("\\1", 2, "0", STR_PAD_LEFT), $date); you will have to work around it with something like ereg("([0-9]+)-([0-9]+)-([0-9]+)", $date, $parts); $d = str_pad($parts[1], 2, "0", STR_PAD_LEFT); $m = str_pad($parts[2], 2, "0", STR_PAD_LEFT); $y = $parts[3]; $newdate = "$y-$m-$d"; http://www.php.net/manual/nl/function.str-pad.php