how to get stop words less then 3 characters and spaces being entered

[finestice]

hi,

i have a search engine that searches keywords in mysql database...

 

i have a simple form but if someone enters a load of spaces it displays the whole database contents.. also i wanna remove any words less then 3 characters being searched for..

i have

 

(strlen($search)<=3)

 

what else should i add??

 

cheers

 

[mikecampbell]

(strlen(trim($search))<=3)