Home/ Questions/Q 3979176
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-20T05:08:15+00:00

This should be a simple one for someone who gets regex. I have a

  • 0

This should be a simple one for someone who gets regex.

I have a field on a page that is pre-populated by php, but is editable using javascript. I need to be able to preserve linebreaks when swapping between ‘edit mode’ and ‘fixed mode’.

I understand that textareas like their linebreaks to be \n, and normal html likes to see <br /> tags. I’m using the function .replace(/\n/g, '<br />') to get from textarea to div, but I’m not sure what to use to get the field back into the textarea and keep the linebreaks.

Also I’m not sure whether just replacing <br /> with \n is safe, in case the browser decides it likes <br> better.

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    When you set white-space: pre-wrap in CSS then the line breaks are preserved with no need to replace them with br tags.

    See this example: http://jsfiddle.net/jVBdm/

    Update: white-space: pre-wrap will not work in IE6 and IE7 (thanks Kenneth J for pointing this out) but white-space: pre will work — which may or may not be enough for you. You can use a conditional style for IE6 and IE7 to use pre and use use pre-wrap on modern browsers.

    • 0