preg_replace() & str_replace()

[TechnoDiver]

Can someone please tell me why neither one of these are working:

$content = str_replace(array("\r", "\n"), '', $row['content']);
$content = preg_replace( "/\r|\n/", '', $row['content']);

I've tried each one of the to replace

$content = $row['content'];

and for some ungodly reason neither one of them are working. This is simply pulling content from a database but it keeps displaying \r\n when displayed in a page. Why?

[requinix]

You mean you literally see a backslash and "r" or "n"?

[Barand]

Out of curiosity, what do you see if you output them into textareas.

If my $row['content'] contains "abc\ndef\nghi", I see ...

if I use this code ...

    $content = str_replace(["\r", "\n"], "", $row['content']);
    echo "<textarea>{$row['content']}</textarea><br>";
    echo "<textarea>$content</textarea><br>";

 

[TechnoDiver]

9 hours ago, requinix said:

You mean you literally see a backslash and "r" or "n"?

yea, and I can't get rid of them. It's strange nothing is working

7 hours ago, Barand said:

Out of curiosity, what do you see if you output them into textareas.

 

in textareas I still get the \r\n and also all the break tags as well (<br />).

This uses a function to pull the posts from the database and then echos an html string with the properties inserted. It works fine if I just

$content = $row['content'];

except it's riddled with /r/n. Neither one of the ways I've used (str_replace & preg_replace) works. I'm stumped, I feel this is exactly the type of thing these functions were made for and can't imagine why they wouldn't work.

[Barand]

30 minutes ago, TechnoDiver said:

in textareas I still get the \r\n and also all the break tags as well (<br />).

Break tags!. That's why I asked you to use a textarea.

Break tags are causing the problem. You remove the newline characters but the break tags will make it look as though they are still there when you output to the browser.

Don't store break tags in your data, just the newline characters.  If you want line breaks in the browser output, add the break tags when you output to the browser with nl2br()