I'm converting 30 year old code and needed a string TAB function:

  //tab function similar to TAB used in old BASIC languages
  //though some of them did not truncate if the string were
  //longer than the requested position
  function tab($instring="",$topos=0){
    if(strlen($instring)<$topos){
      $result=str_pad($instring,$topos-1," ",STR_PAD_RIGHT);
    }else{
      $result=substr($instring,0,$topos-1);
    }
    return $result;
  }

  $pline="String with this tab to 50 and";
  $tline=tab($pline,50)."finish it.";
  echo $tline.PHP_EOL;
  $pline="101010101020202020203030303030404040404050505050506060606060";
  $tline=tab($pline,50)."finish it.";
  echo $tline.PHP_EOL;

  //Results in this output:
  //String with this tab to 50 and                   finish it.
  //1010101010202020202030303030304040404040505050505finish it.