New Lines In Str_replace

[DarkElf]

I'm trying to write a code that takes a txt file and converts it to html whilst retaining formatting. It all works fine except for one little glitch - where there is a double return in the txt file I want to close the html paragraph element and then open a new one (so the paragraph is properly split using the <p></p> tags rather than double <br />'s). For some reason I can't get it to work properly.I've used nl2br() to convert new lines to breaks (<br />). I've then tried using str_replace() to search for instances where there are two <br /> tags immediately after each other, but it doesn't find them. I think the problem relates to the fact that the consecutive tags are on seperate lines, i.e. i'm not look for:<br /><br />I'm looking for:<br /><br />I would have assumed that to find and replace the latter I could use the following code:

<?php$string = file_get_contents(filename.txt);$string = nl2br($string);$string = str_replace("<br />\n<br />","</p>\n<p>,$string);?>

But this doesn't work. What's really confusing me is that if I try simply searching for and replacing the 2nd of the two <br /> tags it works fine:

<?php$string = file_get_contents(filename.txt);$string = nl2br($string);$string = str_replace("\n<br />","</p>\n<p>,$string);?>

The inverse is not true (i.e. it finds "\n<br />" but it doesn't find "<br />\n")On the plus side that last version of code very nearly delivers the desired effect, however it means that there is a redundant <br /> tag at the end of each paragraph that I'd quite like to eliminate.Can anyone explain to me why this happens and how to fix it?

[redwall_hp]

Try this:

<?php$string = file_get_contents(filename.txt);$string = nl2br($string);$string = str_replace("<br />\r\n<br />","</p>\n<p>,$string);?>

There might be a carriage return as well as a newline in there.

[DarkElf]

Nope, already tried that The str_replace function doesn't seem to like patterns which run across multiple lines. I can't understand why, the \n character seems to have some special rules applied to it that make it behave funny.

[Wander]

try using preg_replace instead, $str = preg_replace('/<br ?\/?>\r?\n<br ?\/?>/i',"</p>\n<p>",$str);

[DarkElf]

try using preg_replace instead, $str = preg_replace('/<br ?\/?>\r?\n<br ?\/?>/i',"</p>\n<p>",$str);

Works a charm, thanks