What it does?
nl2br() inserts HTML <br> (or <br />) tags before every newline character ( , , ) in a string. It does not remove the newline — it adds a line break tag before it. Useful for displaying user-submitted text (e.g., from textareas) in HTML while preserving line breaks.
Signature
nl2br(string $string, bool $use_xhtml = true): string
- $string — the input string.
- $use_xhtml — if true (default), inserts <br />; if false, inserts <br>.
Returns the modified string.
Basic example
<?php
$text = "Hello World. This is PHP. Enjoy coding!";
echo nl2br($text);
?>
Output (HTML source):
Hello World.<br />
This is PHP.<br />
Enjoy coding!
In the browser this renders as three lines.