Weird new line issue on mail(), please help

[Teach]

Hi guys,

I hope you can help me please. I am experiencing a weird problem, which wasn't happening before I moved my server over to a new host on a dedicated server.

The problem is basically, when we take $_POST data from a textarea, a new line in there seems to get duplicated. So let's say the user presses their enter key twice to start a whole new line, on the mail() it ends up as 4.

Weirdly though, as you will see by the below code, we also insert the reply into a reply database. In there, it's absolutely fine. I have maunally checked my MySQL Database, and can confirm it looks perfect

I have the following function in my functions.php, but I don't think it's to do with it (but it's the only thing that touches $_POST). We had it before the server mode, and magic_quotes is off so I don't even think it's being used:

if (get_magic_quotes_gpc()) {
    function stripslashes_deep($value)
    {
        $value = is_array($value) ?
                    array_map('stripslashes_deep', $value) :
                    stripslashes($value);

    return $value;
}

$_POST = array_map('stripslashes_deep', $_POST);
$_GET = array_map('stripslashes_deep', $_GET);
$_COOKIE = array_map('stripslashes_deep', $_COOKIE);
$_REQUEST = array_map('stripslashes_deep', $_REQUEST);
}

Code:

$write=1;
$msg = "";
if (empty($_POST['reply'])) {
    $write=0;
    $msg .= "<li><span>Please fill in the Reply field</span></li>\n";
}

if (!empty($msg)) {
  echo "<p>Please correct the following:</p>\n<ul>\n$msg\n</ul>\n\n";
  exit();
}

if ($write==1)
{
  $dateadded=date("Y-m-d H:i:s");
  $sql="Insert into replydb (id_ticket,name,dateadded,reply,user) values (".mysql_real_escape_string(htmlentities($ticket['id_ticket'])).",'".mysql_real_escape_string($_SESSION['account'])."','".mysql_real_escape_string($dateadded)."','Some of our standard text followed by the reply via:\n\n".mysql_real_escape_string(htmlentities($_POST['reply']))."\n\n*** End ***',1)";
  $writesql=mysql_query($sql);

  $subject = "Re: Ticket [ID:".htmlentities($ticket['id_ticket'])."]";
  $headers = "From: Web <[e-mail]>\r\n";
  $headers .= "X-Mailer: PHP ".phpversion()."\r\n";
  $headers .= "Staff-ID: ".$_SESSION['account']."\r\n";
  $headers .= "X-Originating-IP: ".$_SESSION['ip']."\r\n";

  $msg="Some of our standard text followed by the reply via:\n\n".$_POST['reply']."\n\n*** End ***";

  mail($ticket['email'], $subject, $msg, $headers);
  echo "            <ul>\n              <li><span>Sent!</span></li>\n            </ul>\n\n";
}

So, by the above code, it appears when it gets mail()'ed it goes crazy. Also, with GMail (only gmail I've seen) the "X-Originating-IP" header appears as the message text, which is weird too (it never used to do that)

Any help appreciated!

[NogDog]

When I've seen this before, it is apparently due to the server's sendmail program converting plain "\n" line breaks to "\r\n" - which should be OK, but it seems that some mail clients do not handle them well and treat them as two consecutive line breaks. It might also explain the issue with the header if it's turning your "\r\n" sequences into "\r\r\n".

I would start by talking with your web host admin and see if they can check the sendmail configuration on your server, and if there is an option to turn off such newline conversion, to do so, then see if that fixes things.

[Teach]

Hi NogDog, thanks for that 🙂

I think you're correct. It definitely is to do with qmail, we used to use sendmail

Unfortunately we have a dedicated server, so I'm going to have to fix it myself. Google is providing some advice on new lines in it, but nothing I can take from it to fix it 🙁