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How do you preserve line breaks from a textarea control to a asp:literal?

I am saving data with line breaks from a textarea control to a SQL Server 2008 database. I have queried the DB and the data is being saved with square bracket characters representing line breaks. When this data is binded back to a textarea control the line breaks are preserved.

However, if I bind the data to a asp:literal control the line breaks are not preserved.

How do I preserve the line breaks when pulling data from SQL that was saved from a textarea control? I was thinking about do a replace for vbcrlf but the line breaks are being saved as square bracket characters rather than vbcrlf.

Lee

Replace them with chr(10) and/or chr(13). See here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms187323.aspx

Cheers,

Lee

markerasmus

ASKER

I tried that and it didn't work:

If Not ld.First.Profile Is Nothing Then litProfile.Text = ld.First.Profile.ToString.Replace(Chr(13) + Chr(10), "VbCrLf")

I also replacing Chr(13) and Chr(10) individually. The square indicating line breaks still persists.

Any other ideas?

nullcory

As long as your literal uses Mode=PassThrough (default) or Mode=Transform you could replace the linebreaks with " " and it would insert an html linebreak.

Note: Mode="Encode" encodes your literal text to html and will not work for a linebreak

markerasmus

ASKER

Thanks, but how do I replace the square character with " "? chr(10) and chr(13) don't do it.

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nullcory

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markerasmus

ASKER

Thanks nullcory. ...ld.First.Profile.ToString.Replace(Chr(10), " ") worked.

nullcory

You're going to have a lingering Carriage Return ("\r" or Chr(13)) but it should be of no consequence.
But if you want it gone you could do this
ld.First.Profile.ToString.Replace(Chr(13)+Chr(10), " ")
or
ld.First.Profile.ToString.Replace("\r\n"," ")

\r is the escape sequence for Chr(13) (carriage return)
and \n is the escape sequence for Chr(10) (line feed)