Rendering newlines in user-submitted content (Python web app)

Question

I have a web.py app that takes input from a textarea and inputs it to a database. I can get the information from the database and post it to the page but the NEWLINES are g

Answer 1

Two main ways to do this. The easiest one is to wrap the output in

which will format it as entered.

Or, you can replace newlies with
(and not with

) as the characters represent a line break and not a paragraph.

For the second option, this is one approach:

>>> s
'hello\nthere\r\nthis\n\ris a test'
>>> r = '
'
>>> s.replace('\r\n',r).replace('\n\r',r).replace('\r',r).replace('\n',r)
'hello
there
this
is a test'
>>> 

Or the third option - which is to use one of the many text entry libraries/formats and render the content through them (as mentioned by others - like markdown).

However, that would be overkill if all you want to do is a simple replace.