text area format reservation

[scorpioy]

I have a web form that contains both text field and text area. After I save the strings from the form to the database, and then retrieve them to a table, the strings in the text area become one line. I don't know if the return charactors get lost from the database or because html table tag <td></td> cannot display text area. What I want is to display to a table with the same format as what user has submitted in that text area.

Any help please.

[devinemke]

the line returns are probably still there, you just have to run the data through nl2br to display them in your browser.

[scorpioy]

Thanks for the reply. There is still a minor problem in the text area.

If the user hits carriage return, then '\n' is added and format will be shown as exactly what user typed. But if the user don't do that and let the text area automatically do the word wrap, then there is no '\n', and then the format shown in the table will still be a single line.

How do solve this problem?

[devinemke]

then you can either use the wordwrap() function or even easier is to simply display the text in an HTML table with a specified cell width.