Displaying data on the screen

[tberger]

I get confused with this.

I have a welcome page that reads the users cookies/sessions and then welcomes them. I am outputting the information correctly but am having trouble with how it is displayed on the screen. The result is outputting like this:

Welcome, Tracy BergerYou have successfully logged in as [e-mail] first and last names were passed by session data; your username was stored in the cookie. The cookie value is: [e-mail]

What I would like is:

Welcome, Tracy Berger!
You have successfully logged in as [e-mail]
Your first and last names were passed by session data; your username was stored in the cookie.
The cookie value is: [e-mail]

I seem to struggle when I have to mix in the php with the html.

Here is my code:
<?php
/ Tracy Berger (00835940)
welcome.php
/
require('libraryTEST.pinc');
$cookie= $HTTP_COOKIE_VARS["ok"];
if (!isset($cookie)){
header("Cache-Control: no-cache, must-revalidate");
}
echo "Welcome, ";
echo $SESSION[ 'fName'] . " " . $SESSION['lName'];

echo "You have successfully logged in as ";
echo $_SESSION['userName'];

echo "Your first and last names were passed by session data; your username was stored in the cookie. ";
echo "The cookie value is: ";
echo $cookie ;
?>

Any suggestions?

[tberger]

I tried something that basically got the job done on the echo line I wanted to a new line after I forced a <br> tag

echo $SESSION[ 'fName'] . " " . $SESSION['lName'], "<br>";

If there is a better way, I would love to hear it but for now my issue is resolved.

Thanks for taking the time to read my post!

[bradgrafelman]

Well, there's two things to keep in mind:

1. Browsers don't display text on a new line simply because you placed text on a new line in the source code. Browsers do know, however, to add a line break when they encounter the "<br>" HTML entity. Since you're outputting HTML, you need to add a <br> every time you want a new line.

2. I've seen this in so many people's code that I wish I could find the person who started the notion and strangle them. Multiple echo() calls do NOT add new lines to the outputted source. PHP outputs ONLY what you tell it, and nothing more. If you want a new line character, you would use the \n escape sequence in a double-quoted string (single-quoted strings won't work... if you don't know why, go look at the manual and learn what a [man]string[/man] is), like so:

echo "This text is on one line,\nand this text is on another!";

Again, because browsers don't look for new lines but instead the "<br>" entity, the above code will not be split onto two lines in your browser (unless you set a different content type, OR if you wrap the text in a "<pre></pre>" section).

EDIT: Also, when posting PHP code, please use the board's [PHP][/PHP] bbcode tags - they make the code much, much easier to read (as well as aiding the diagnosis of syntax errors). You should edit your post now and add these bbcode tags to help others in reading/analyzing your code.