replace all newlines with <br> tags

[lkrubner@geocities.com]

PHP has a function called nl2br() which takes all the newlines in a
string and turns them into break tags <br>. I need to do the same in
javascript. Is this about right? I'm not sure how one is supposed to
reference invisible characters in Javascript strings. I took an example
on the web and tried to modify it to my uses.

function nl2br_js(myStri ng) {
var regX = /\n/gi ;

s = new String(myString );
s = s.replace(regX, "<br /> \n");
return s;
}

After looking around quite a bit using Google, I still couldn't find
out what the gi in the above example is for. What is it?

[Ivo]

Re: replace all newlines with &lt;br&gt; tags

<lkrubner@geoci ties.com> wrote[color=blue]
> PHP has a function called nl2br() which takes all the newlines in a
> string and turns them into break tags <br>. I need to do the same in
> javascript. Is this about right?
>
> function nl2br_js(myStri ng) {
> var regX = /\n/gi ;
>
> s = new String(myString );
> s = s.replace(regX, "<br /> \n");
> return s;
> }
> After looking around quite a bit using Google, I still couldn't find
> out what the gi in the above example is for. What is it?[/color]

The 'g' flag makes the expression global so it finds all matches rather than
just the first one.
The 'i' flag makes it case-insensitive so that "a" matches "a" as well as
"A". In your case, the are no letters to match so you can drop the 'i'.
There is a global variable "s" in your function that serves no purpose; also
the variable "regX" is not really needed. Try this cleaned up version:

function nl2br_js(myStri ng){
return myString.replac e( /\n/g, '<br />\n' );
}

hth
--
Ivo

[lkrubner@geocities.com]

Re: replace all newlines with &lt;br&gt; tags

Thanks much. This gives me an error "Unterminat ed regular expression
literal"; I'm sorry to stay I don't know enough about Javascript or
regular expressions to trouble shoot this.

[lkrubner@geocities.com]

Re: replace all newlines with &lt;br&gt; tags

I rewrite it like this:


function nl2br_js(myStri ng){
var regX = /\\n/g;
var replaceString = '<br> \n';
return myString.replac e(regX, replaceString);
}

but now I keep getting "Unterminat ed string literal" in FireFox. It's
pointing to the space after the br tag.

[lkrubner@geocities.com]

Re: replace all newlines with &lt;br&gt; tags

Okay, guessing quite randomly I got it to work with this:



function nl2br_js(myStri ng){
var regX = /\\n/g;
var replaceString = '<br> \\n';
return myString.replac e(regX, replaceString);
}