How do I keep whitespace formatting using PHP/HTML?

Question

I'm parsing text from a file and storing it in a string. The problem is that some of the text in the original files contains ASCII art and whatnot that I would like to preserve. When I print out the string on the HTML page , even if it does have the same formatting and everything since it is in HTML , the spacing and line breaks are not preserved. What is the best way to print out the text in HTML exactly as it was in the original text file?
I would like to give an example, but unfortunately, I was not able to get it to display correctly in this markdown editor :P
Basically, I would like suggestions on how to display ASCII art in HTML .

Answer 1

use the <pre> tag (pre formatted), that will use a mono spaced font (for your art) and keep all the white space

<pre>
text goes here and here 
             and here and here            Some out here
     ▄             ▄█▄ █▄       ▄
 ▄█▀█▓ ▄▓▀▀█▀ ▀▀▀█▓▀▀ ▀▀    ▄█▀█▓▀▀▀▀▀▓▄▀██▀▀
██  ██ ▀██▄▄ ▄█  ▀ ░▒ ░▒   ██  ██ ▄█▄ █▀ ██
█▓▄▀██  ▄ ▀█▌▓█    ▒▓ ▒▓   █▓▄▀██ ▓█ ▀▄  █▓
█▒  █▓ ██▄▓▀ ▀█▄▄█▄▓█ ▓█   █▒  █▓ ▒█  ▓█▄ ▒
    ▀▒           ▀  ▀ █▀       ▀▒  ▀  █▀  ░

</pre>  

You might have to convert any <'s to &lt; 's

Answer 2

the <pre> and </pre> might not be ideal in textarea etc..

When wanting to preserve new line - \\n and \\n\\r use nl2br as mentioned by UnkwnTech and Brad Mace.

When wanting to preserve spaces use str_replace :

str_replace(' ', ' ', $stringVariable);

When both use this:

$result = str_replace(' ', ' ', $stringVariable);
$result = nl2br($result);

Answer 3

打印数据时，使用nl2br()将\\n和\\r\\n转换为<br>

Answer 4

For all those searchng for preserving the text fetched from database , this worked for me , setting CSS as following ,

pre {
     white-space: pre-line;
     text-align : left;
  }

in html :

<pre >
     <?php echo htmlentities($yourText ) ; ?>
</pre>

Answer 5

just echo the necessary special characters (\\s, \\n, or \\r ) along with your string in your PHP code.

<?php 

echo ("hello world \n")

?>