Forms and CR/LF in textareas

[Anon]

Hello,

Can anyone explain to me how a carriage return in a textarea field is treated when passed through a form? When I echo the post vars, it seems to strip them out.

I think the old hard, virtual and physical on the textareas have something to do with it, but I am not sure.

How TECHNICALLY is the CR/LF interpreted?

[Anon]

It depends on the OS. Each major OS uses a different set of ASCII characters for line breaks:

Unix = \n
Mac = \r
Windows = \r\n

Which ever OS is submitting your form will attach it's own set of character at each line break. You can always use the nl2br() function to display them properly on your page.