Line feed not working in windows (notepad)

[chathura86]

hi,

i have the following code which writes content to a file

<?php
 
$x = "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx \n yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy \n fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff \n";
 
file_put_contents ("test.txt", $x);
?>
 

in fedora when i open the file in vi/vim/gedit (fedora) and wordpad (winxp)

it shows the line breaks

but not in the notepad (winxp)

but if i updated the code to insert the carriage return (\r) it will
display the line breaks in the notepad also

<?php
$x = "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx \n\r yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy \n\r fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff \n\r ";
 
file_put_contents ("test.txt", $x);
?>
 

i wonder why note pad required the \r also

thanks in advance

Chathura Bamunusinghe

[Markus]

I don't know the specifics of *why* it's like that, but I do know this problem has been abstracted away into the PHP constant PHP_EOL. Using this constant, your application can be new-line agnostic.

If you're on windows, this constant is defined as "\n\r"; on (an older) Mac, "\r"; otherwise, "\n".

<?php
 
echo "My PHP application is", PHP_EOL;
echo "new-line agnostic.", PHP_EOL;
 

[Atli]

@Markus
I can sort of understand both the Windows and Unix versions, but not really the old Mac version.

The Windows version emulates the way a typewriter works. First snapping back to the start of the line "\r", and then pulling the paper one line up "\n".

The Unix version is more "digital". Text is a string of characters, and when you add a new line, it is natural for the next character after the "\n" to become the first character of the new line. (Think; splitting the text into lines on "\n", and printing each line.) -- For the new line to start at the same point where it's parent ended, the new line would have to be padded with spaces, which is just pointless. The "\r" has no purpose in this context.

The old Mac version makes no sense. The "\r", carriage-return, only ever returned a typewriter to the start of the same line. How that results in you being in the next line I do not know. -- Which is probably partly why they abandoned it. The latest versions apparently use the Unix EOF now, or so I hear. (Well, the latest Macs are Unix based, so that makes sense.)


It kind of surprises me that Notepad still doesn't recognize "\n" as a new-line, or at least has an option to make it recognize it. It's such a small modification that would make such a large difference.- I don't know how many times I've tried to make minor modifications to my PHP code in Notepad, only to have it all be wrapped into a single line.

[Markus]

Updated :)