Problem displaying text with CGI

[Ovid]

Yet another humble begging of answers from wiser monks:

I have a form with textareas on it where I am setting the wrap to physical.

The form is submitted using a Perl CGI script which saves the data to a MYSQL database. Checking the database contents reveals that I am saving the data with carriage returns and line feeds. However, when I print the data back out to a Web page, the line feeds are stripped. Thus, the users cannot format their text into paragraphs.

Using PRE tags allows the line feeds to show up, but then the each line scrolls off the right edge of the screen. I've tried setting the table width to 100% and also tried setting it to 800 pixels, both to no avail. How do I get around this?

I am thinking that a perl substitution like this would work:

s/stuff to substitute/<P>\\n/g;

The problem is, I don't know what belongs in "stuff to substitute."

[Zoogie]

   $text =~ s/\n/<br>/g;

perhaps? That might work better if the wrapping is set to "virtual"...

- Zoogie

[jcwren]

$comment =~ s/(\r\n|\n\r)/<BR>/g;
$comment =~ s/(\n|\r)/<BR>/g;

will catch the fact that not all systems handle CR/LF pairs the same.

--Chris

[lhoward]

The HTML::FromText module does a great job of converting flat text to good HTML.

use HTML::FromText;

my $html=text2html($text,urls=>1,email=>1);

Lots of options to do cool stuff (like make URL's and E-mails clickable, etc...) and you don't have to make the text display ugly on the browser by using PRE tags.

[outcast]

i would try some thing like this:


<textarea row=25 cols=50>
$comment =~ s/\n/<br>/g;
$comment =~ s/\t/nbspnbspnbspnbsp/g;

[Cybercosis]

If you're definitely working with a CR/LF set, then $line =~ s/\xD\xA/<BR>/g; will replace it just fine.
~Cybercosis

[Ovid]

First, I have to say that I meant "newlines" rather than "linefeeds." I guess I was having flashbacks to my days working on mainframes (despite that comment, I'm in my early thirties). Next, I'll be looking for JCLmonks.

After a bit of testing, s/\n/<BR>\n/g; seems to work fine. The users will actually start using this next week and I know something's going to go wrong, so I'll come back here and look at the other answers after they yell at me :)