[php] PHP new line break in emails

I have the following code:

$message = "Good news! The item# $item_number on which you placed a bid of \$ $bid_price is now available for purchase at your bid price.\n
The seller, $bid_user is making this offer.\n
\nItem Title : $title\n

\nAll the best,\n
$bid_user\n
$email\n
";

echo $message;
$htmlContent = $baseClass->email_friend($item_number, $title, $bid_price, $bid_user, $mcat, $message, $email, $VIEWSTATE, $EVENTVALIDATION, $URL);

The problem is that the new line break (\n) is not working.

if you are outputting the code as html - change /n -->
and do echo $message;

Are you building this string using single or double quotes? \r and \n only work with double quotes, as well as embedded variables. For example:

$foo = 'bar';
echo 'Hello \n $foo!';

will output:

Hello \n $foo!

But:

$foo = 'bar';
echo "Hello \n $foo!";

will output:

Hello
bar!

I know this is an old question but anyway it might help someone.

I tend to use PHP_EOL for this purposes (due to cross-platform compatibility).

echo "line 1".PHP_EOL."line 2".PHP_EOL;

If you're planning to show the result in a browser then you have to use "<br>".

EDIT: since your exact question is about emails, things are a bit different. For pure text emails see Brendan Bullen's accepted answer. For HTML emails you simply use HTML formatting.

you can use "Line1<br>Line2"

When we insert any line break with a programming language the char code for this is "\n". php does output that but html can't display that due to htmls line break is
. so easy way to do this job is replacing all the "\n" with "
". so the code should be

str_replace("\n","<br/>",$str);

after adding this code you wont have to use pre tag for all the output oparation.

copyed this ans from this website :

If you output to html or an html e-mail you will need to use <br> or <br /> instead of \n.

If it's just a text e-mail: Are you perhaps using ' instead of "? Although then your values would not be inserted either...

EDIT: Maybe your class for sending emails has an option for HTML emails and then you can use <br />

1) Double-quotes

$output = "Good news! The item# $item_number  on which you placed a bid of \$ $bid_price is now available for purchase at your bid price.\nThe seller, $bid_user is making this offer.\n\nItem Title : $title\n\nAll the best,\n $bid_user\n$email\n";

If you use double-quotes then \n will work (there will be no newline in browser but see the source code in your browser - the \n characters will be replaced for newlines)

2) Single quotes doesn't have the effect as the double-quotes above:

$output = 'Good news! The item# $item_number  on which you placed a bid of \$ $bid_price is now available for purchase at your bid price.\nThe seller, $bid_user is making this offer.\n\nItem Title : $title\n\nAll the best,\n $bid_user\n$email\n';

all characters will be printed as is (even variables!)

3) Line breaks in HTML

$html_output = "Good news! The item# $item_number  on which you placed a bid of <br />$ $bid_price is now available for purchase at your bid price.<br />The seller, $bid_user is making this offer.<br /><br />Item Title : $title<br /><br />All the best,<br /> $bid_user<br />$email<br />";

• There will be line breaks in your browser and variables will be replaced with their content.