[Resolved] \n <br> and text from a database

[cheese]

Hi All,

I have got some text in a database which I am returning to be displayed.

As you will see in the code below I have tried three options, but none work.

I typed the text in to the database via the PHPMyAdmin tool.

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($query, MYSQL_NUM))
{

print "<table>".NL;
print "<tr>".NL;
print "<td><h1 align=left class=headline>" . $row[2] . "</h1></td>".NL;
print "</tr>".NL;
print "<tr>".NL;
print "<td><p>" . str_replace('\n','<br />\n',$row
[3]) . "</p></td>".NL;
// I have tried . str_replace('\n','<br>',$row[3]) . "...etc
// also tried . str_replace('Chr(13)','<br>',$row[3]) . "...etc
print "</tr>".NL;
print "<tr>".NL;
print "<td>";
if (@file('pictures/'. $row[4] .'.jpg'))
{
	print "<img src='pictures/" . $row[4] . ".jpg' border=0>&nbsp";
}
if (@file('pictures/'. $row[5] .'.jpg'))
{
	print "<img src='pictures/" . $row[5] . ".jpg' border=0>&nbsp";
}
if (@file('pictures/'. $row[6] .'.jpg'))
{
	print "<img src='pictures/" . $row[6] . ".jpg' border=0>";
}
print "</td></tr>".NL;
print "</table>".NL;
}

Any offers.......

Cheers,

Neil.

[bubblenut]

Well firstly, using file to check if a file exists :eek: what a waste of resources. File opens the file and reads it's entire contents and returns it as an array. You should be using [man]file_exists()[/man].
Also, take a look at [man]nl2br()[/man] for converting new lines into breaks but the problem with your code was that you were using single qoutes. Single quotes are completely unparsed so echo '$var' would print $var and echo '\n' would print \n rather than a newline character. So, your str_replace was replacing all occurences of a backslash followed by the letter n rather than the newline characters. To remedy this you should use double quotes instead.

[cheese]

Hi Bubblenut,

Thanks for the comments....

'\n' is now "\n" and works well....

Regarding the file against file_exists, just goes to prove you should always get more than one opinion. The file was given to me as an answer to another problem.

So do I understand from what you say that file_exists just checks if it is there, where as the file returns all the data and then (in the case of my poor coding) just dumps it?

Still,as I have said to my children on many occassions it is important to learn at least one new thing every day of your life.

Thanks again,

Neil.

[Frederick]

Using file_exists will prevent your page from crashing and spitting out an error message.

if (file_exists("pagename.txt")) {
    // do something with file
} else {
    echo "Page not found";
}

[cheese]

Thanks all,

Now I have a little more understanding.

Cheers,

Neil.