[SOLVED] nl2br and multiple line breaks

[Prodigal Son]

I'm currently using the nl2br function to create break lines for new lines from my db. How would I go about limiting the line breaks to max two in a row? For example, if I had some text that had 5 line breaks, it would get reduced to two only.

[GingerRobot]

Regex?

 

<?php
$str = "Test \n Test \n\n Test \n\n\n\n\n Test";
$str = preg_replace("|(\\n){3,}|s","\n\n",$str);
echo nl2br($str);
?>

[Prodigal Son]

Hmm... weird. I used this to prevent user input from creating big spaces and I tried this and it worked nicely preventing multiple line breaks. But for some reason a user was still able to create more than 2 line breaks. I tried copying and pasting their message with lots of line breaks, but when I did it, it got cut down to 2... so I have no idea how that individual did that. Anyone see why the individual could do that?

[DarkWater]

Either their post was already IN the database...or you don't use htmlspecialchars() and they just used a straight <br /> tag.

[Prodigal Son]

Either their post was already IN the database...or you don't use htmlspecialchars() and they just used a straight <br /> tag.

Hmm, nope their post wasn't in the database yet. I do use htmlspecialchars so the br tag doesn't work. So I find it weird how they did that since I even copy and pasted their input and mine got reduced.

[Prodigal Son]

Either their post was already IN the database...or you don't use htmlspecialchars() and they just used a straight <br /> tag.

After playing around for a bit I seem to have found out how they did it.

For each space character you make after pressing enter it creates a breakline.

For example if you type Hello followed by the enter key 5 times and Goodbye, you'd get Hello, 2 breaklines, then Goodbye.

But if you type Hello, press enter, press space, press enter, press space, press enter, press enter, and type goodbye. You can get 3 line gaps in between.

 

Haven't used regex in a long time, and I was never that good with it to begin with, but I tried this:

$str = preg_replace("/(\\s){2,}/s"," ",$str);
$str = preg_replace("/(\\n){3,}/s","\n\n",$str);

 

But it just ended up removing all breaklines and extra spaces instead. Anyone see what's wrong?

[GingerRobot]

Try:

 

<?php
$str = "Test \n Test \n\n\n\n\n Test \n \n \n \n \n Test";
$str = preg_replace("|(\\n\s*){3,}|s","\n\n",$str);
echo nl2br($str);
?>