Help Managing Newline Characters....

Diveloperz

I'm writing a program in PHP in which the user inputs a code string into a large textbox and the program interprets this string. It is important that my program be able to recognized where new lines are placed in the code string, and I'm having trouble with this. Printing new lines is simple but I need to read them.

Say I have a string $codestring and I want to remove all new lines and replace them with the "#" character. So the following input:

some_function();
$some_variable=some_value;
//some sort of comment

*would be replaced with:

some_function();#$some_variable=some_value;#//some sort of comment

How could I do this?

Thanks!

~Diveloperz

Weedpacket

[man]str_replace[/man]

Diveloperz

Right, but what expression could you input to replace new line strings? Given the function str_replace(pattern,replacement,string) I can see that "replacement" would be the "#" character and "string" would be the "$somestring" variable, but how can you input a newline character for the pattern argument?

_theworks

try

str_replace("\n","#",$string)

Weedpacket

Instead of just asking, consulting the manual would have yielded more information.

Diveloperz

Thanks theworks, I thought "/n" used when reading strings would only recognize the literal "/" and "n" characters, but I'll try it. Testing for me is hard since I'm not running my own PHP server and can't access it through FTP. 🙁

Weedpacket, the manual contains an absurd ammount of information, I had already searched for a good hour with no results. My question is very specific, not just a general "how do strings work?" kind of thing. None of what I read adressed my issue. The page you linked has no relevance at all. "RTFM" isn't always helpful advice.

bodzan

 str_replace("\n","#",$string);

_theworks wrote "\n" not "/n"...

Weedpacket

Well, I just thought it would save you asking other questions later. You do want to learn how to do this stuff yourself, don't you? It sounds like the problem is that you lack the patience to read one page.

Diveloperz wrote:
The page you linked has no relevance at all.

Even if the page is too long for you, you could have used your browser's "Find" option to search for instances of the word "newline". The very first match would have been in this example code:

<?php
echo 'this is a simple string';

echo 'You can also have embedded newlines in
strings this way as it is
okay to do';

// Outputs: Arnold once said: "I'll be back"
echo 'Arnold once said: "I\'ll be back"';

// Outputs: You deleted C:\*.*?
echo 'You deleted C:\\*.*?';

// Outputs: You deleted C:\*.*?
echo 'You deleted C:\*.*?';

// Outputs: This will not expand: \n a newline
echo 'This will not expand: \n a newline';

// Outputs: Variables do not $expand $either
echo 'Variables do not $expand $either';
?>

And immediately following that is a section about double quoted strings, that starts with a table that includes things like \n, \r, and \t, and what they mean in double-quoted strings.

The forums are not a substitute for the manual. So. RTFM.

Diveloperz

So then the code would look like this:

str_replace("
","#",$string);

Not exactly a conventional syntax, and it's unique to what was posted previouosly. Also not an obvious implication from the documentation you refrenced. I'm not even sure that it's right.

_theworks

str_replace("
","#",$string);

will not work.
but.

 
str_replace("\n","#",$string);

should work.

the thing with using \n ,\t or \r is that they dont mean SH*T unless there in a double quoted string. meaning the string must be surrounded by " instead of '

i agree with weedpacket, the php manual is all you need to learn php. download the mini .chm version here