textarea line breaks

[Stooney]

I have a textarea input which is output later.  To retain the linebreaks when outputting, are 'pre' tags good to use?  Or is there a better (or more updated) method to use?

[rajivgonsalves]

you can use the function nl2br

 

http://php.net/nl2br

[ziv]

pre tag is good for any pre-formated data (plain text) but if you want to convert it to simple html, you can use the nl2br() function.

<?php
$str = 'this is text
with new line';

echo $str; //this is text with new line 

echo nl2br($str); //this is text<br />with new line
?>