How to add line breaks to an HTML textarea

user_105419 0
Viewed 362155

I’m editing a <textarea> with JavaScript. The problem is that when I make line breaks in it, they won’t display. How can I do this?

I’m getting the value to write a function, but it won’t give line breaks.

line-breaks textarea html javascript
9 Answers

The problem comes from the fact that line breaks (\n\r?) are not the same as HTML <br/> tags:

var text = document.forms[0].txt.value;
text = text.replace(/\r?\n/g, '<br />');

Since many of the comments and my own experience have shown me that this <br> solution is not working as expected, here is an example of how to append a new line to a textarea using '\r\n':

function log(text) {
    var txtArea;

    txtArea = document.getElementById("txtDebug");
    txtArea.value += text + '\r\n';
}
TStamper_398090

You need to use \n for linebreaks inside textarea

user_1053720

If you want to display text inside your own page, you can use the <pre> tag.

document.querySelector('textarea').addEventListener('keyup', function() {
  document.querySelector('pre').innerText = this.value;
});
<textarea placeholder="type text here"></textarea>
<pre style="font-family: inherits">
The
new lines will
be respected
      and spaces too
</pre>

user_18508510

A new line is just whitespace to the browser and won't be treated any different to a normal space (" "). To get a new line, you must insert <BR /> elements.

Another attempt to solve the problem: Type the text into the textarea and then add some JavaScript behind a button to convert the invisible characters to something readable and dump the result to a DIV. That will tell you what your browser wants.

Aaron_Digulla_340880
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