weird problem -- \n's in email:

[Anon]

Okay, I have a page that takes whatever is in a multiline <TEXTAREA> and based on that my script assembles an email to my mailing list, with some headers and footers assembled around the message in the textarea box. Now, in my script I have things like:

$email_body = "";
$email_body .= "this is from the list:\n\n";
$email_body .= $messagetext; // <-- From textbox
$email_body .= "\n\n";
$email_body .= "to unsubscribe blah blah\n";
//code to mail the $email_body goes here

so, that is how i assemble the body of the email, paraphrased but pretty accurate. now, when I receive the email from my Linux POP3 server to an Outlook client, the \n's that i HARDCODED into the script come out just fine, but the carriage-returns that i enter in the textbox show up as spaces or nothing (i can't tell which)...but i've talked to other users (possibly in HTML-based email) that see the carraige-retunrs just fine...now...my suspician is that this has something to do w/ Windoze > Linux problems, in that I'm typing in IE for Windoze and my script is on a Linux box...so are the carraige-returns i'm putting into the textbox not being received by the Linux box and therefore don't show up in the email when it is sent out? anyone have ANY idea on what this is, or what I could do to pin down the bug? or, if you know the bug, how i can solve it?
thanks for the help in advance,
Justin Kohlhepp
[e-mail]

[Anon]

I can think of a way that might work. But it may only work in html enabled mail. Try to run nl2br(); (new line to break) like "$email_body = nl2br($email_body);" that will insert br's which may just show the tag in text only email is the problem. But if someone knows how to convert linux to windows breaks, go with that. Which could be run with dog (better than cat) but there must be an easier way.

[Anon]

nl2br??? no.. that would not work at all... that would display "<br>" in the mail...

try doing this:

$email_body = "$messagetext";

that might work.. I havent tried it tho.

Andreas Bernhardsen

[Anon]

try preg_replace("\r","\n",$messagetext) to replace the CRs with LFs.

failing which, as a diagnostic you can urlencode the string, echo it and have a look at what the chars in question are, with aid of an ascii-hex table

--
rad

[Anon]

You say nothing about how the <textarea> is set up. Are you
giving it a wrap attribute?

[Anon]

Thanks to everyone for their replies. I will try the preg_replace. I already have tried
$email_body .= "$messagetext";
I think in the real script that is how it is set up, so that isn't it. nl2br() wouldn't work because this is a text/plain email I'm sending. And if I still can't figure it out, I'll echo the entire thing out in ascii hex codes and go from there. Kirk, the TEXTAREA is setup w/ WRAP="virtual".
Justin

[jsagara]

Hi Justin,

I'm having the same problem. Were you able to find a solution?

[jsagara]

$text = str_replace("\r","\n", $text);
$text = str_replace("\n\n", "\n", $text);

Replace all carriage returns with newlines. Then you are left with two newlines at every former carriage return, so replace the dual newlines with single newlines. Works like a charm.