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PHP PHP Basics (Retired) PHP Datatypes Strings

Bruno Dias
Bruno Dias
10,554 Points
Posted by Bruno Dias
Bruno Dias
10,554 Points

\n doesn't break the line with no <pre>

If I remove the pre tag, the line doesn't break even with \n.

Is that correct?

<?php
            $greeting = "Hello, friends!\n";
            $greeting{0} = "J";
            $secondary_greeting = "How are you today?";
            echo $greeting;
            echo $secondary_greeting;
?>

1 Answer

Robert Richey
Robert Richey
Courses Plus Student 16,352 Points

Hi Bruno,

If you're sending HTML to a browser, line breaks are added with <br>. Otherwise, if the output is going to a console or file, then use \n or PHP_EOL which inserts "The correct 'End Of Line' symbol for this platform."

The <pre> tag displays content as though it came from a file. That's why \n creates a line break in this situation. Here is an MDN article with more information on the <pre> tag.

I was trained to add both HTML and file line breaks, but in practice - for prototyping or learning, I take the lazy way out and use the line break appropriate for my intended output.

Hope this helps,

Cheers