PHP - how to create a newline character?

php string-interpolation
davidjhp picture davidjhp · Nov 21, 2010 · Viewed 997.6k times · Source

In PHP I am trying to create a newline character:

echo $clientid;
echo ' ';
echo $lastname;
echo ' ';
echo '\r\n';

Afterwards I open the created file in Notepad and it writes the newline literally:

1 John Doe\r\n 1 John Doe\r\n 1 John Doe\r\n

I have tried many variations of the \r\n, but none work. Why isn't the newline turning into a newline?

Answer

Gumbo picture Gumbo · Nov 21, 2010

Only double quoted strings interpret the escape sequences \r and \n as '0x0D' and '0x0A' respectively, so you want:

"\r\n"

Single quoted strings, on the other hand, only know the escape sequences \\ and \'.

So unless you concatenate the single quoted string with a line break generated elsewhere (e. g., using double quoted string "\r\n" or using chr function chr(0x0D).chr(0x0A)), the only other way to have a line break within a single quoted string is to literally type it with your editor:

$s = 'some text before the line break
some text after';

Make sure to check your editor for its line break settings if you require some specific character sequence (\r\n for example).

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