newline from db, won't change to \n

epimeth

so I've got a little db editor thing going...

echo '        <td onclick="editQuestion('.$q_id.', '.
                $q_c.', \''.
                addslashes(htmlspecialchars($q_q, ENT_NOQUOTES)).'\', \''.
                preg_replace('/\n/', '\n', addslashes(htmlspecialchars($q_a, ENT_NOQUOTES))).'\');">'.
                 $q_q.'</td>'.NL;

please not the 4th line (begining with preg_replace)

it should, in my opinion, get rid of newlines in the db and replace them with \n. this works... sorta... lemme show you the result in the html:

        <td onclick="editQuestion(1, 1, 'How can I change my account leverage?', 'The leverage requirement is set automatically by system default to 3 levels;
\ntehis
\nfdsa
\nfds
\nfdsa
\nfds');">How can I change my account leverage?</td>

aint that a beut? a \n at the begining of every new line... but the newline is still there

any takers?

epimeth

so I spoke to my mate in the office, he told me to check the \r as well... could somebody please explain this to me? shouldn't the PHP recognize that a \n\r is a \n???
is there a better way to do this that isn't:
preg_replace('/\r/', '\r', preg_replace('/\n/', '\n', addslashes(htmlspecialchars($q_a, ENT_NOQUOTES))))

and no, I don't mean a single preg_replace with both \n and \r as strings in an array for the preg_replace parameters.

dcav

What is the correct result that you are expecting, can you post a resulting output code?

epimeth

the result I want is that a string that looks like this:

hello
world

look like this:
hello\nworld

what I'm getting now is that it looks like this:

hello\r\nworld

I want to know why there is a \r and how do I get rid of it (and if I should get rid of it?)