[SOLVED] multiple line breaks & textarea.

[Michdd]

I'm returning text from a database and trying to put it inside of a textarea and displaying the line breaks within it. I tried something like:

 

$row['text'] = str_replace('<br />', '\n', nl2br($row['text']));

 

But I just get 1 line break, then a bunch of \n's display inside the text area.

[.josh]

so the text from your database already ends in \n, you're nl2bring it, only to turn around and replace the br's with \n's?

[MadTechie]

That code doesn't make much sense!

convert newline to Break, then convert break to newline!

 

does

$row['text']

have the \n in ?

 

try

echo "<textarea>{$row['text']}</textarea>";

and post back what you get

[Michdd]

Oh whoops. My text already contained line breaks (<br />) even so when I try:

 

str_replace('<br />', '\n', $row['post'])

 

I still get the \n's in the text area.

[MadTechie]

try

echo "<textarea>{$row['text']}</textarea>";

and post back what you get

[.josh]

in your str_replace try changing '\n' to "\n"  (use double quotes instead of single quotes)

[Michdd]

in your str_replace try changing '\n' to "\n"  (use double quotes instead of single quotes)

That worked, but I'm still confused as to why.. Any explanation?

[.josh]

double quotes tell php to parse the special chars inside the quotes.  So you can use escaped chars that represent things like newline etc.. and php will parse it as a newline.  Or tell php to recognize $blah as a variable to parse, rather than literally $blah.  php parses stuff in single quotes literally.  So with single quotes, you were telling it to replace it with a literal \n instead of a newline.