I create form in PHP, and when I type something in text area will be stored into database. But when it display on screen, "\n" will be ignored. I check the table in database, the several lines becomes one line. I set charset is utf-8, suppose that it will get original format with content from text area. anyone knows how to solve this problem?

example: I typed in text area:
"hi anyone,
I have question about PHP,
Could anyone help to solve the problem?
thanks!"

the output is:
"hi anyone,I have question about PHP,Could anyone help to solve theproblem?thanks!"

I want to get original format. How to do?

Are you viewing the output in an HTML page? If so, you need to insert <br> tags. You can do that with preg_replace. Example:

Thanks! It works now.

You're welcome.

Also, look at the PHP function nl2br(). Details: http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.nl2br.php.

As to your original question, the newlines are saved to your database and not "ignored" at all. If you look at your web page source (CTRL+U), you will see that the newlines are still there in your markup. However a web browser handles these newlines and carriage returns differently based on the HTML tags the string is in. If you want to preserve/display the text exactly the way you want, you need to place them inside <pre></pre> tags and if not, you should use the above-mentioned nl2br function.

For example (within PRE tags):

output returned to the web browser:

Example, with PHP's nl2br function:

resulting in this markup being returned to the web browser: