Nl2br - Manual - PHP

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(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)

nl2br — Inserts HTML line breaks before all newlines in a string

Description

nl2br(string $string, bool $use_xhtml = true): string

Returns string with <br /> or <br> inserted before all newlines (\r\n, \n\r, \n and \r).

Parameters

string

The input string.

use_xhtml

Whether to use XHTML compatible line breaks or not.

Return Values

Returns the altered string.

Examples

Example #1 Using nl2br()

<?phpecho nl2br("foo isn't\n bar");?>

The above example will output:

foo isn't<br /> bar

Example #2 Generating valid HTML markup using the use_xhtml parameter

<?phpecho nl2br("Welcome\r\nThis is my HTML document", false);?>

The above example will output:

Welcome<br> This is my HTML document

Example #3 Various newline separators

<?php$string = "This\r\nis\n\ra\nstring\r";echo nl2br($string);?>

The above example will output:

This<br /> is<br /> a<br /> string<br />

See Also

• htmlspecialchars() - Convert special characters to HTML entities
• htmlentities() - Convert all applicable characters to HTML entities
• wordwrap() - Wraps a string to a given number of characters
• str_replace() - Replace all occurrences of the search string with the replacement string

Found A Problem?

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User Contributed Notes 6 notes

up down 133 CGameProgrammer at gmail dot com ¶20 years ago It's important to remember that this function does NOT replace newlines with <br> tags. Rather, it inserts a <br> tag before each newline, but it still preserves the newlines themselves! This caused problems for me regarding a function I was writing -- I forgot the newlines were still being preserved. If you don't want newlines, do: <?php $Result = str_replace( "\n", '<br />', $Text ); ?> up down 96 ngkongs at gmail dot com ¶18 years ago to replace all linebreaks to <br /> the best solution (IMO) is: <?php function nl2br2($string) { $string = str_replace(array("\r\n", "\r", "\n"), "<br />", $string); return $string; } ?> because each OS have different ASCII chars for linebreak: windows = \r\n unix = \n mac = \r works perfect for me up down 50 N/A ¶17 years ago Here's a more simple one: <?php /** * Convert BR tags to nl * * @param string The string to convert * @return string The converted string */ function br2nl($string) { return preg_replace('/\<br(\s*)?\/?\>/i', "\n", $string); } ?> Enjoy up down 18 fquffio at live dot it ¶11 years ago Starting from PHP 4.3.10 and PHP 5.0.2, this should be the most correct way to replace <br /> and <br> tags with newlines and carriage returns. <?php /** * Convert BR tags to newlines and carriage returns. * * @param string The string to convert * @return string The converted string */ function br2nl ( $string ) { return preg_replace('/\<br(\s*)?\/?\>/i', PHP_EOL, $string); } ?> (Please note this is a minor edit of this function: http://php.net/nl2br#86678 ) You might also want to be "platform specific", and therefore this function might be of some help: <?php /** * Convert BR tags to newlines and carriage returns. * * @param string The string to convert * @param string The string to use as line separator * @return string The converted string */ function br2nl ( $string, $separator = PHP_EOL ) { $separator = in_array($separator, array("\n", "\r", "\r\n", "\n\r", chr(30), chr(155), PHP_EOL)) ? $separator : PHP_EOL; // Checks if provided $separator is valid. return preg_replace('/\<br(\s*)?\/?\>/i', $separator, $string); } ?> up down 12 aabaev ¶7 years ago double quotes !== single quotes php > echo nl2br('\r\n'); \r\n php > echo nl2br("\r\n"); <br /> up down 8 Anders Norrbring ¶19 years ago Seeing all these suggestions on a br2nl function, I can also see that neither would work with a sloppy written html line break.. Users can't be trusted to write good code, we know that, and mixing case isn't too uncommon. I think this little snippet would do most tricks, both XHTML style and HTML, even mixed case like <Br> <bR /> and even <br > or <br />. <?php function br2nl($text) { return preg_replace('/<br\\s*?\/??>/i', '', $text); } ?> ＋add a note

• String Functions
  • addcslashes
  • addslashes
  • bin2hex
  • chop
  • chr
  • chunk_​split
  • convert_​uudecode
  • convert_​uuencode
  • count_​chars
  • crc32
  • crypt
  • echo
  • explode
  • fprintf
  • get_​html_​translation_​table
  • hebrev
  • hex2bin
  • html_​entity_​decode
  • htmlentities
  • htmlspecialchars
  • htmlspecialchars_​decode
  • implode
  • join
  • lcfirst
  • levenshtein
  • localeconv
  • ltrim
  • md5
  • md5_​file
  • metaphone
  • nl_​langinfo
  • nl2br
  • number_​format
  • ord
  • parse_​str
  • print
  • printf
  • quoted_​printable_​decode
  • quoted_​printable_​encode
  • quotemeta
  • rtrim
  • setlocale
  • sha1
  • sha1_​file
  • similar_​text
  • soundex
  • sprintf
  • sscanf
  • str_​contains
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  • str_​ends_​with
  • str_​getcsv
  • str_​increment
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  • str_​pad
  • str_​repeat
  • str_​replace
  • str_​rot13
  • str_​shuffle
  • str_​split
  • str_​starts_​with
  • str_​word_​count
  • strcasecmp
  • strchr
  • strcmp
  • strcoll
  • strcspn
  • strip_​tags
  • stripcslashes
  • stripos
  • stripslashes
  • stristr
  • strlen
  • strnatcasecmp
  • strnatcmp
  • strncasecmp
  • strncmp
  • strpbrk
  • strpos
  • strrchr
  • strrev
  • strripos
  • strrpos
  • strspn
  • strstr
  • strtok
  • strtolower
  • strtoupper
  • strtr
  • substr
  • substr_​compare
  • substr_​count
  • substr_​replace
  • trim
  • ucfirst
  • ucwords
  • vfprintf
  • vprintf
  • vsprintf
  • wordwrap
• Deprecated
  • convert_​cyr_​string
  • hebrevc
  • money_​format
  • utf8_​decode
  • utf8_​encode

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