Echoing Line Breaks in Multiple Platforms Using PHP

When echoing line breaks in PHP, the characters \n and \r play a crucial role. They represent newline and carriage return characters, respectively. The difference between the two lies in their operating system compatibility.

\n vs. \r

• \n (Newline): Used in Unix-based systems like Linux and macOS to mark the end of a line.
• \r (Carriage Return): Used in Windows systems to move the cursor to the beginning of the current line.

Cross-Platform Line Break Echoing

To echo a line break that works across different platforms, it's recommended to use the PHP_EOL constant. This constant automatically sets itself to the correct line break character for the operating system where the PHP script is executed.

Using PHP_EOL

echo "Line 1" . PHP_EOL . "Line 2";

Backwards Compatibility

For PHP versions prior to 5.0.2, where the PHP_EOL constant is not defined, you can use the following code:

if (!defined('PHP_EOL')) {
    switch (strtoupper(substr(PHP_OS, 0, 3))) {
        case 'WIN':
            define('PHP_EOL', "\r\n");
            break;
        case 'DAR':
            define('PHP_EOL', "\r");
            break;
        default:
            define('PHP_EOL', "\n");
    }
}

This code determines the operating system and sets the PHP_EOL constant accordingly.