PHP New Line Not Working

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Why does PHP echo'd text lose it's formatting?

I cant get the new line to function work right. It just comes out as one line. Like this -

Make: Sony Model: a Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo

This is the code for it ---

$message="Make: " . $_POST['make'] . "\r\n Model: " . $_POST['model'] . "\r\n Processor: " . $_POST['processor'];

When this is sent as an email it works perfect but when i do

echo $message;

it just comes out as the above - it all on one line. How can i make this work?

thankyou

does my name look like rodger? lol - no its not duplicate. – Dr.Pepper Oct 28 '11 at 13:47 — Dr.Pepper, Oct 28 '11 at 13:47
@user977229 It's a dupe nonetheless. – middus Oct 28 '11 at 13:53 — middus, Oct 28 '11 at 13:53

score 15 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 28 '11 at 13:35

15

You are presumably echoing this onto a web page.

Browsers do not (or at least, should not) respect literal new lines, you have to use the HTML <br> tag instead.

Try this:

echo str_replace(array("\r\n","\r","\n"),'<br>',$message);
// or
echo nl2br($message);

answered Oct 28 '11 at 13:35

DaveRandom

thankyou, how can i incorporate the
tag into the code? – Dr.Pepper Oct 28 '11 at 13:36

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 28 '11 at 13:36

3

HTML ignores newlines.

Instead, you should use <br />, <pre>, or <table>.

answered Oct 28 '11 at 13:36

SLaks

Genuine question (not sarky comment): ``?? How does that work?
– DaveRandom Oct 28 '11 at 13:38
@DaveRandom Just use a table to display tabular data instead of formatting text?! – middus Oct 28 '11 at 13:39
1

Oh right I see. Sorry, I thought you were saying that putting it in a table would render the line breaks. Not paying attention. +1. – DaveRandom Oct 28 '11 at 13:40

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 28 '11 at 13:36

If you want print it using HTML you'll either need to use <br /> or use the nl2br() function.

Using <br />:

$message = 'Make: ' . $_POST['name'] . '<br />'; //...

If you want to send plaintext, set an appropriate HTTP header, e.g.

header('Content-Type: text/plain');

Most browsers will take this as a hint to display it in 'raw mode'.

3 Answers3