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Replace newlines with HTML paragraph tags

The following replaces 2 or more newlines with paragraph tags however if a paragraph (2 or more newlines) contains a single newline it is not wrapped in paragraph tags.

I have a basic understanding of regular expressions but I'm at a loss on how to fix the regex below to correct problem.

I've figured out that it DOES work when newlines are \r but not when they are \r\n or \n.

The example below will output:
This is the first paragraph.
This is the second
paragraph.

But I need it to output::
This is the first paragraph.
This is the second
paragraph.

$string = "This is the first paragraph.\n\nThis is the second\nparagraph.";
echo preg_replace("{(?:^|(?:\x0d\x0a){2,}|\x0a{2,}¦\x0d{2,})(.+?)(?=(?:(\x0d\x0a){2,}|\x0d{2,}|\x0a{2,}|$))}", "</p>$1<p>", $string)

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hielo

How about this:
$string = "This is the first paragraph.\n\nThis is the second\nparagraph.";
echo "" . preg_replace("/\n\n+/","",$string) . "";

OR if you want newline between paragraphs:
$string = "This is the first paragraph.\n\nThis is the second\nparagraph.";
echo "" . preg_replace("/\n\n+/","\n",$string) . "";

evco

ASKER

I need to accommodate for all operating systems though.

I tried to build upon your example but can't quite get it there...

echo "<p>" . preg_replace("/^[\r|\n|\r\n]{2,}$/", "</p><p>", $string) . "</p>";

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hielo

Try:
echo "" . preg_replace("/(\r|\n|\r\n){2,}/", "", $string) . "";

evco

ASKER

It works...sort of. It wraps around ANY amount of newlines. So strings before a single newline get wrapped in paragraph tags.

hielo

Try:
echo "" . preg_replace("/(\r|\n|\r\n)(\r|\n|\r\n)+/", "", $string) . "";

evco

ASKER

It still does the same thing. I've spent so much time on this darn thing today that I think I'm starting to repeat some of my solutions out of desparation!

I'm wondering if it may be easier to tweak the original regex since it got the job done most of the way. It's just ignoring chunks that contain a single newline. For example, it will skip wrapping the first paragraph in because of the single newline. However this problem only exists for newlines on Win (\r\n) and Unix/Linux (\n) but works for Mac (\r):

$string = "This is a \n paragraph \n\n. And this is another paragraph \n\n"
preg_replace("{(?:^|(?:\x0d\x0a){2,}|\x0a{2,}|\x0d{2,})(.+?)(?=(?:(\x0d\x0a){2,}|\x0d{2,}|\x0a{2,}|$))}", "$1", $string);

hielo

Try:

echo "<p>" . preg_replace("/(\n)(\n)+/", "</p><p>", ( preg_replace("/\r/","\n",$string)) ) . "</p>";
OR:
echo "<p>" . preg_replace("/(\n)(\n)+/U", "</p><p>", ( preg_replace("/\r/U","\n",$string)) ) . "</p>";

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evco

ASKER

It works for \n and \r but not \r\n and if you throw in some whitespace before or after the newlines it throws everything off. I've tried a couple variation on what you gave me but didn't get anywhere.

hielo

>>but not \r\n ...
That is odd because my last suggestion first changes \r to \n. So if you had \r\n it gets converted to \n\n. Then the regexp to the left takes that result and sees \n\n and makes the substitution. I wonder if your input actually has \f (linefeed):

echo "" . preg_replace("/(\n)(\n)+/", "", ( preg_replace("/[\r\f]/","\n",$string))

evco

ASKER

Actually I'm setting the input manually so I can control it. The only code being executed in my test script right now has been the following---I change up the newline format each time to test all three: \n, \r and \r\n

$string = "This is a\r\nparagraph\r\n\r\nThis is another paragraph\rn\r\n";
echo "" . preg_replace("/(\n)(\n)+/", "", preg_replace("/[\r\f]/", "\n", $string));

I tried your solution but it wraps around the content preceding the single newline.

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hielo

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evco

ASKER

Sweet! That seems to work. Now I just need to try it in the production code---I'm not at my office computer at the moment so I will verify later this evening.

evco

ASKER

Thank you for your help hielo. It works beautifully.