I have a php string with a lot of information to be displayed inside a textarea html element.
I don't have access to that textarea nor to the script (if any) that generates it.
$somestring = 'first line \nSecond line \nThird line.';
$somestring as NOT been "worked" with trim or filter_var. Nothing.
On the textfield, I get the \n printed on the textarea hence, not interpreted.
What can I try in order to have those new lines applied?
Thanks in advance.
Try wrapping $somestring with " (double quotes) instead of ' (single quotes)
\n, \r and other backslash escape characters only works in double quotes and heredoc. In single quotes and nowdoc (the single quote version of heredoc), they are read as literal \n and \r.
Example:
<?php
echo "Hello\nWorld"; // Two lines: 'Hello' and 'World'
echo 'Hello\nWorld'; // One line: literally 'Hello\nWorld'
echo <<<HEREDOC
Hello\nWorld
HEREDOC; // Same as "Hello\nWorld"
echo <<<'NOWDOC'
Hello\nWorld
NOWDOC; // Same as 'Hello\nWorld' - only works in PHP 5.3.0+
Read more about this behaviour in the PHP manual
EDIT:
The reason single and double quotes behave differently is because they are both needed in different situations.
For instance, if you would have a string with a lot of new lines, you would use double quotes:
echo "This\nstring\nhas\na\nlot\nof\nlines\n";
But if you would use a string with a lot of backslashes, such as a file name (on Windows) or a regular expression, you would use single quotes to simplify it and avoid having unexpected problems by forgetting to escape a backslash:
echo "C:\this\will\not\work"; // Prints a tab instead of \t and a newline instead of \n
echo 'C:\this\would\work'; // Prints the expected string
echo '/regular expression/'; // Best way to write a regular expression
$somestring = "first line \nSecond line \nThird line.";
http://php.net/types.string <-- extremely useful reading
this article is a cornerstone of PHP knowledge and it's just impossible to use PHP without it.
unlike most of manual pages which are are just for quick reference, this very page is one which every developer should learn by heart.
Related
I found that in the muilti-module which is created by phalcon-tool has these code:
$application = new Application($di);
echo str_replace(["\n","\r","\t"], '', $application->handle()->getContent());
Why remove "\n","\r","\t"?
As Spangen pointed out, these are the escape sequences for some special 'whitespace' characters.
This link here has more information on them: http://us3.php.net/manual/en/language.types.string.php#language.types.string.syntax.double
Now, an important note: for them to work as intended in PHP, you need to enclose them in double quotes, like: "\t", "\n". Single quotes won't produce the intended effects of these escape sequences: '\t', '\n'.
To illustrate this more, you can run this code and see the results. Running it from console like php myfile.php might cause some visual glitches, and running it in the browser will need that you view the 'source code'.
echo "Let's test... ";
echo "Because no new line characters were added, this sentence will be printed in the same line as the previous phrase.";
echo "\n";
echo "But now a new line was added, by typing \\n enclosed in double quotes.";
echo "\n";
echo "Now, let's add a tab, between the next two words: hello \t there.";
echo "\n";
echo "Now, let's add a carriage return, which will 'force' the 'cursor' in this string to move to the beginning, thus 'splitting' this string into two. Adding it now: \r There, I just added it before this last sentence.";
echo "\n";
echo 'Finally, these special characters will not work as intended if we just enclose the string with single quotes, as done in this string: \n \t \r';
This link here has more information on the difference between new lines and carriage returns: https://stackoverflow.com/a/12747850/466395
So yeah, in the original code that you posted, the person removed those special characters using str_replace(), because they tend to produce 'visual glitches' (unintented malformed output) in console.
This is to replace newlines, line feeds and tabs with a single space so that the application's details can be written to STD_OUT as a single line with no wrapping.
I have an issue. I'm trying to write a string with ASCII text like this: '/\'. But whenever I do that the backslash screws up the code by canceling out the quote defining it a string therefore screwing it up. Is there anyway to cancel out the backslash so it doesn't cancel out the quote? Thanks guys!
The \ is special character, that says: 'The next character has special meaning'.
So if you want to dispaly \ you should write... \\ to get one \ in output
It would be very helpful to show what you have tried, but this will produce the exact output you requested (as shown by SO)
echo '\'/\\' . "'\n" ;
'/\'
It should also give you an idea of how backslash escaping works in different types of strings.
A great solution when writing stuff like that is HEREDOC. Inside a heredoc block you don't need to worry about escaping anything, it will just be text.
For example:
echo <<<TEXT
/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\
TEXT;
There is one catch. PHP will break if you don't align the echo at the start of the line, or if the TEXT; is not aligned at the start of the line.
Heredoc can also be assigned to a variable, like so:
$var = <<<SOME_MORE_TEXT
/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\/|\
SOME_MORE_TEXT;
Finally, HEREDOC preserves tabs and spaces. Which also might come in handy when doing ASCII art.
Refer to: http://php.net/manual/en/language.types.string.php for more information.
You only need to escape the final one when using single quotes.
$var = 'backslash\backslash\backslash\\';
// output is:
// backslash\backslash\backslash\
Given the following statements:
echo 'string1'."\n";
echo 'string2';
The following gets rendered as output:
string1
string2
With these statements
echo 'string1'.'\n';
echo 'string2';
This gets rendered (note the verbatim backslash n):
string1\nstring2
When \n is in double quotes, it makes a new line as it should.
when \n is in single quotes, it will be shown in the browser as text.
Can anyone explain this behavior?
Using single quotes will mark it as a string, so PHP will literally output \n.
See here: PHP Manual
Alternatively use chr() with the ASCII code of a new line as an argument:
echo 'string'.chr(10);
Or use the <br/> Tag
echo 'string<br/>';
http://php.net/manual/en/language.types.string.php#language.types.string.syntax.double
If the string is enclosed in double-quotes ("), PHP will interpret more escape sequences for special characters
For some reason I can't use \n to create a linefeed when outputting to a file with PHP. It just writes "\n" to the file. I've tried using "\\n" as well, where it just writes "\n" (as expected). But I can't for the life of me figure out why adding \n to my strings isn't creating new lines. I've also tried \r\n but it just appends "\r\n" to the line in the file.
Example:
error_log('test\n', 3, 'error.log');
error_log('test2\n', 3, 'error.log');
Outputs:
test\ntest2\n
Using MAMP on OSX in case that matters (some sort of PHP config thing maybe?).
Any suggestions?
Use double quotes. "test\n" will work just fine (Or, use 'test' . PHP_EOL).
If the string is enclosed in double-quotes ("), PHP will interpret more escape sequences for special characters:
http://php.net/manual/en/language.types.string.php
\n is not meant to be seen as a new line by the end user, you must use the html <br/> element for that.
/n only affects how the html that is generated by php appears in the source code of the web page. if you go to your web page and click on 'view source' you will see php-generated html as one long line. Not pretty. That's what \n is for ; to break that php-generated html into shorter lines. The purpose of \n is to make a prettier 'view source' page.
When you run a PHP script in a browser, it will be rendered as HTML by default. If the books you’re using show otherwise, then either the code or the illustration is inaccurate. You can use “view source” to view what was sent to the browser and you’ll see that your line feeds are present.
<?php
echo "Line 1\nLine 2";
?>
This will render in your browser as:
Line 1 Line 2
If you need to send plain text to your browser, you can use something like:
<?php
header('Content-type: text/plain');
echo "Line 1\nLine 2";
?>
This will output:
Line 1
Line 2
nl2br() function use for create new line
echo nl2br("Welcome\r\n This is my HTML document", false);
The above example will output:
Welcome
This is my HTML document
I'm pretty sure you are outputting to a html file.
The problem is html ignores newlines in source which means you have to replace the newlines with <br/> if you want a newline in the resulting page display.
You need to use double quotes. Double quotes have more escape chars.
error_log("test\n", 3, 'error.log');
error_log("test2\n", 3, 'error.log');
to place the \n in double quotes try
$LOG = str_replace('\n', "\n", $LOG);
It's because you use apostrophes ('). Use quotationmarks (") instead. ' prompts PHP to use whatever is in between the apostrophes literally.
Double quotes are what you want. Single quotes ignore the \ escape. Double quotes will also evaluate variable expressions for you.
Check this page in the php manual for more.
The “\n” or “\r” or similar tags are treated as white-space in HTML and browsers. You can use the "pre" tag to solve that issue
<?php
echo "<pre>";
echo "line1 \n some text \t a tab \r some other content";
echo "</pre>";
?>
If you want to print something like this with a newline (\n) after it:
<p id = "theyateme">Did it get eaten?</p>
To print the above, you should do this:
<?php
print('<p id = "theyateme">Did it get eaten?</p>' . "\n");
?>
The client code from above would be:
<p id = "theyateme">Did it get eaten?</p>
The output from above would be:
Did it get eaten?
I know it's hard, but I always do it that way, and you almost always have to do it that way.
Sometimes you want PHP to print \n to the page instead of giving a newline, like in JavaScript code (generated by PHP).
NOTE about answer: You might be like: Why did you use print instead of echo (I like my echo). That is because I prefer print over echo and printf, because it works better in some cases (my cases usually), but it can be done fine with echo in this case.
I try to use single quotes as much as possible and I've noticed that I can't use \n in single quotes. I know I can just enter a newline literally by pressing return, but that screws up the indentation of my code.
Is there some ASCII character or something that I can type that will produce newline when I'm using single quotes?
No, because single-quotes even inhibit hex code replacement.
echo 'Hello, world!' . "\xA";
echo 'hollow world' . PHP_EOL;
Use the constant PHP_EOL then it is OS independent too.
If you are echoing to a browser, you can use <br/> with your statement:
echo 'Will print a newline<br/>';
echo 'But this wont!';
FYI it is possible to get newlines into strings without double quotes:
printf('Please%1$sgive%1$sme%1$snewlines%1$s', PHP_EOL);
Which may be useful If your irrational fear of double quotes knows no bounds. Though I fear this cure may be worse than the disease.
I wonder why no one added the alternative of using the function chr():
echo 'Hello World!' . chr(10);
or, more efficient if you're going to repeat it a million times:
define('C_NewLine', chr(10));
...
echo 'Hello World!' . C_NewLine;
This avoids the silly-looking notation of concatenating a single- and double-quoted string.
The only escape sequence you can use in single quotes is for the single quote itself.
$foo = 'That\'s great';
The only way you could insert a new line into a string created with single quotes is to insert a literal newline
$bar = 'That\'s
cheating';
There IS a difference on using single VS double quotes in PHP
e.g:
1. echo '$var\n';
2. echo "$var\n";
in 1, PHP will print literally: $var\n
in 2, PHP will have to search the location in memory for $var, and return the value in that location, also, it will have to parse the \n as a new line character and print that result
We're in the range of millionths of a second, but there IS a difference in performance. I would recommend you to use single quotes whenever possible, even knowing you won't be able to perceive this performance increase. But I'm a paranoid developer when it comes to performance.
You may want to consider using <<<
e.g.
<<<VARIABLE
this is some
random text
that I'm typing
here and I will end it with the
same word I started it with
VARIABLE
More info at: http://php.net/manual/en/language.types.string.php
Btw - Some Coding environments don't know how to handle the above syntax.
You can use this:
echo 'Hello World' . "\n";
This worked well for me:
print_r('Hello world'.PHP_EOL);
No, according to documentation, PHP recognize no special symbol in single quotes. And there is no single reason to use single quotes as much as possible
in case you have a variable :
$your_var = 'declare your var';
echo 'i want to show my var here'.$your_var.'<br>';