Adding a line break in MySQL INSERT INTO text

Question

Could someone tell me how to add a new line in a text that I enter in a MySql table?

I tried using the \'\\n\' in the line I entered with INSERT I

Answer 1

MySQL can record linebreaks just fine in most cases, but the problem is, you need <br /> tags in the actual string for your browser to show the breaks. Since you mentioned PHP, you can use the nl2br() function to convert a linebreak character ("\n") into HTML <br /> tag.

Just use it like this:

<?php
echo nl2br("Hello, World!\n I hate you so much");
?>

Output (in HTML):

Hello, World!<br>I hate you so much

Here's a link to the manual: http://php.net/manual/en/function.nl2br.php

Answer 2

For the record, I wanted to add some line breaks into existing data and I got \n to work ok...

Sample data:

Sentence. Sentence. Sentence

I did:

UPDATE table SET field = REPLACE(field, '. ', '.\r\n')

However, it also worked with just \r and just \n.

Answer 3

You can simply replace all \n with <br/> tag so that when page is displayed then it breaks line.

UPDATE table SET field = REPLACE(field, '\n', '<br/>')

Answer 4

INSERT INTO myTable VALUES("First line\r\nSecond line\r\nThird line");