Inserts HTML line breaks before all newlines in a string

nl_langinfo
number_format
String Functions
PHP Manual

# nl2br

(PHP 4, PHP 5)

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

### Description

string nl2br ( string `$string` [, bool `$is_xhtml` = true ] )

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

### Parameters

`string`

  The input string.

`is_xhtml`

  Whether to use XHTML compatible line breaks or not.

### Return Values

Returns the altered string.

### Examples

Example #1 Using nl2br()

`<?php
echo nl2br("foo isn't\n bar");
?>`

The above example will output:

    foo isn't<br />
     bar

Example #2 Generating valid HTML markup using the `is_xhtml` parameter

`<?php
echo 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 />

### Changelog

Version | Description
--- | ---
5.3.0 | Added the optional `is_xhtml` parameter.
4.0.5 | nl2br() is now XHTML compliant. All older versions will return `string` with '<br>' inserted before newlines instead of '<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

nl_langinfo
number_format
String Functions
PHP Manual