adding line breaks to output text file

[bhayes]

Hello!  I'm having trouble getting line breaks during the output portiong in a bit of code I've written/cobbeled together.  The jist is that a form submits name/value pairs to this php script, it then takes the pairs, and then saves it to another file.  That file will eventually be a file of JS variables, each of which needs to be on a new line.  The script will out put the variables, and even display them on new lines using <br>, but in the new file they all run together. 

You can see it in action at http://www.hayesweddingphoto.com/other/setup.html

Here is the script:

[code]<?

function form_handler()
         {
         global $HTTP_POST_VARS;
         
         reset($HTTP_POST_VARS);
         
         $http_vars = "";
         
         while(list($name, $value) = each($HTTP_POST_VARS))
              $http_vars .= $name . " = " . $value . "<br>";
                           
         return($http_vars);         
         }


;


  $content = form_handler();
  $filename = 'settings2.txt';


// Let's make sure the file exists and is writable first.
   if (is_writable($filename)) {

   
   if (!$handle = fopen($filename, 'w+')) {
         echo "Cannot open file ($filename)";
         exit;
   }

   // Write $http_vars to our opened file.
   if (fwrite($handle, $content) === FALSE) {
       echo "Cannot write to file ($filename)";
       exit;
   }
   
   echo "Success, wrote: <br> <br> $content <br>to file $filename";
   
   fclose($handle);

} else {
   echo "The file $filename is not writable";
}

?>[/code]

As I said, while the browser displays it correctly, the settings2.txt file shows the following:
[code]galleryIndex = http://www.hayesweddingphoto.com<br>introTextfile_section = 1<br>submit = submit<br>[/code]
Thanks for any help you might give!

[Jessica]

It's a text file, not html. Use \n not br

[bhayes]

sorry...I should have mentioned that \n gives the same result.

[bhayes]

ok... \n works when the file name is settings.txt, however when I change the file name to settings.js it no longer works.  I still get the output from above. 

[Jessica]

Mrph...what happens with \r\n?

What happens if at the end of the lines, you add
.'
';

Like actually hit the enter key in your code?

I'm just tossing out random stuff...good luck.

[fiat]

what are you reading the file with?

sometimes this is a quirk in some text editors - they do not recognise/parse the /n and output the data in continuous fashion for certain file types...

[bhayes]

Ok... \r\n gives the correct appearance, but the file does not then opperate correctly (as if the line breaks are not there.)

This did not work at all (unexpected ' I think was the error):
.'
';

basically this is a settings file that will be read by an HTML page, the values inserted into the form so that the user can view/update them, then the process.php file resaves the values to the same file.  I'm reading (viewing) the files with notepad.