Question

I have a txt file that is generated on the server and contains newlines. If I view the file in my ftp editor, they are here. If I download it through my ftp client and open in it windows with notepad, I also see the newlines.

But when I try to download it through the browser by forcing a download window, and then open the file, all the new lines are suddenly gone.

This is the code I have now. I also tried to set the content type to application/force-download, but that also made no difference.

header('Content-Type: text/plain');
header('Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="'.$myFile.'"');
header("Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary");

Any idea why the new lines are only missing when I download it through the browser? But are intact when I view the file on the server, or download it from the ftp and the open in notepad?

Answer 1

Unix line endings (\n) are different than Windows line endings (\r\n). Many FTP programs have an option to automatically convert line endings between operating systems; your browser is not doing this (The browser won’t touch text/plain.)

If you want to be double-sure, you could hexdump the file and look at where a newline ought to be.

Try opening the file with wordpad or notepad++, which respect \n as line endings. Notepad is one of the few tools that still requires \r\n line endings.