I cannot (but want to) preserve a newline from a text area. I have used nl2br. I have used str_replace for \r, \n, \r\n. As far as I can tell, the newlines make it into the database but not out of it.

In a textarea field I have input the following:

.....line
.....line
.....line

I save it in the database... (form method = post)

where it also looks like this.

.....line
.....line
.....line

Clearly the newlines have persisted into the database (which is fine with me).

I then pull the string out and apply the following code (hunting for newlines to deal with.)


...and I get the following

\n.....line.....line.....line\n
\n \r.....line.....line.....line\r
\r\n.....line.....line.....line\r\n

Instead of what I expected which was
\n.....line\n.....line\n.....line\n
\r.....line\r.....line\r.....line\r
etc..

How is it possible for the newlines to persist in the database after going in through $_POST but to be absent coming out? Is there a special character for newlines that I am missing? How do I preserve my newlines?

If at any point before I retrieve the string from the database, and paste it into notepad, it shows CRLF right where they ought to be, but once out of the database, I can only find them at the beginning and end of the string.