line breaks

[Anon]

hello.

i have a large chunk of text that is inserted into a database then read out onto a website. Because the text is broken into mutiple paragraphs, i normally just put a <p> between paragraphs, so when it's read out the browser interprets the spaces.

However, i now find myself needing to embed html tags in the text (the large chunks of text are html tutorials) - i want the html tags changed so the browser won't interpret them as html: eg < becomes &lt; because has to be able to SEE the tags.

How would i do this?

Here's the next problem, if i do that, my <p>'s won't be interpreted correctly and the text will be mashed toghether in one huge paragraph!

help!

thanks in advance.

[Anon]

Just use str_replace (or one of the ereg funtions) along with htmlspecialchars() in the correct ordering. Might also have to use nl2br().