What character represents a new line in a text area
Just quick one, but want to make sure I'm catching cross platform variations.
I like to convert new lines entered into a text area into a [comma], so that the output can be represented on a single line, my question...
Currently, sending from google chrome, when I view the value, I find it uses \r\n for new lines. If I replace \r\n I know it will work for chrome on windows 7, but what about other platforms, are there variations on what other browsers will insert as a new line inside a text area?
Answer
By HTML specifications, browsers are required to canonicalize line breaks in user input to CR LF (\r\n), and I don’t think any browser gets this wrong. Reference: clause 17.13.4 Form content types in the HTML 4.01 spec.
In HTML5 drafts, the situation is more complicated, since they also deal with the processes inside a browser, not just the data that gets sent to a server-side form handler when the form is submitted. According to them (and browser practice), the textarea element value exists in three variants:
- the raw value as entered by the user, unnormalized; it may contain CR, LF, or CR LF pair;
- the internal value, called “API value”, where line breaks are normalized to LF (only);
- the submission value, where line breaks are normalized to CR LF pairs, as per Internet conventions.