php annoy = 1; ( newline incorrectly ignored...grrr)

[MrColin]

I'm teaching myself php (or at least trying) from various resources, however (as is always the case with this sort of approach) my environment behaves differently than any example/book/tutorial I can find.

I've got a LAMP server that works great for some packaged apps already however trying out some examples i find my output is different than sources suggest.

using this example:

<?php

if ($handle = opendir('/path/to/files')) {
    echo "Directory handle: $handle\n";
    echo "Entries:\n";

    /* This is the correct way to loop over the directory. */
    while (false !== ($entry = readdir($handle))) {
        echo "$entry\n";
    }

    /* This is the WRONG way to loop over the directory. */
    while ($entry = readdir($handle)) {
        echo "$entry\n";
    }

    closedir($handle);
}
?>

This should give output on separate lines, but for me it is all on one line. Using google I can find all kinds of stuff related to removing unwanted newlines, but nothing on why newlines are inexplicably ignored.

Any ideas?

 

[MrColin]

nevermind, I think I figured it out, \n is for playing on the console, while <br> is what I needed to use instead.

 

[Markbnj]

If you're outputting html, correct, /n is just whitespace that will be ignored. Ultimately you should avoid <br> as well. Use <p> tags to denote paragraphs for block text output, or in a case like this dump each line into a separate <div>.

 

[sourceninja]

If you're outputting html, correct, /n is just whitespace that will be ignored. Ultimately you should avoid <br> as well. Use <p> tags to denote paragraphs for block text output, or in a case like this dump each line into a separate <div>.

Correct

or if you are really lazy like me, dump it into a <pre> block 😛