PHP and htmlspecialchars and new lines

renegade33

Hi,
I have a textarea where users enter information about themselves. Then i used htmlspecialchars on it for obvious reason. The problem is tho when i use:

print $row['info'];

it displays the text all in one paragraph disregarding the spaces the user put.

For example the user has put:
"Hello my name is John,
I go to U of T and im graduating this year"

when i print it, it shows:
"Hello my name is John, I go to U of T and im grauating this year"

it fully disregards the new line the user has put. How can I fix this problem?
thanks

emrys404

nl2br might be your answer. If not check into the textarea wrap syntax, namely, virtual and hard.

Hope that helps
-emrys

renegade33

emrys404 wrote:
nl2br might be your answer. If not check into the textarea wrap syntax, namely, virtual and hard.

Hope that helps
-emrys

Thank you very much. You are a life saver. The nl2br worked!

emrys404

Great, glad to hear it. Please mark it Resolved, if you dont mind

-emrys

meigwil

Is it possible to use these two functions together?

$bodytext;

$bodytext2 = nl2br($bodytext);

$bodytext3 = htmlspecialchars($bodytext2);

echo $bodytext3;

Would this be correct?

How about if I use regular expressions when the text is inputed in a form, and then written to the database; would these functions have an impact on the html tags when outputted?

Thanks,

Mei