displaying messages...

[abhilashdas]

Just as the function nl2br() , is there any function to handle the conversion of tab to html counterpart? (Or performs both).

[john tindell]

check out htmlentities() but i think you would have to manually convert tabs to four  's.

[mendhak]

Tabs don't exist in HTML. If you need to indent just one line, use four &nbsp;s. If it's an entire paragraph, you might want to surround it in <blockquote>

[penagate]

UAs ignore whitespace by default, unless you explicity say otherwise (using the CSS white-space property, or the <pre> tag which does that by default). Using non breaking spaces (&nbsp;) is not a good idea unless they really shouldn't be non-breaking spaces, i.e. a section of text should be displayed on one line.

If you need to indent text, use the text-indent property (for the first line of a paragraph) or the margin property (for the whole paragraph). You're using <p> tags? Good.

[abhilashdas]

Whts the exact procedure for displaying messages stored in a database?. Curently I am able to do this, But I need to display thr message exactly as enterd by the user keeping newline and spaces in place. With nl2br I have managed to handle newlines but the tab and white spaces are still a problem!!!.

Any shortcuts, other than checking for whitespaces manually?

[penagate]

Use white-space:pre like I suggested.

<p class="message">
  <?=$message?>
</p>

.message {
  white-space: pre;
}

[abhilashdas]

Thanks for the reply.