Member Avatar for PomonaGrange

Hi Folks

I am trying to make a php form processing script. The form would have a large text area in it where the visitors could type a few paragraphs of text. I want this script to break the text from the form after 75 characters or if that is in the middle of a word, then break after completing that word. I also would like this script to insert a line number at the beginning of each line.

Does this sound possible? Any help is greatly appreciated.

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Dani AI

Generated

As suggested, PHP's wordwrap is the right place to start. The snippet below shows a compact, practical pattern that preserves any manual paragraph breaks, wraps each input line at 75 characters without breaking words, adds a padded line number to every resulting line, and outputs safely for HTML.

<?php
// textarea name: 'comments'
$text = isset($_POST['comments']) ? $_POST['comments'] : '';

// normalize newlines and trim
$text = str_replace(array("\r\n", "\r"), "\n", $text);
$text = trim($text);

$wrappedLines = array();
foreach (explode("\n", $text) as $origLine) {
    if ($origLine === '') { // preserve blank lines
        $wrappedLines[] = '';
        continue;
    }
    // wrap at 75 chars, do not cut words
    $wrapped = wordwrap($origLine, 75, "\n", false);
    foreach (explode("\n", $wrapped) as $line) {
        $wrappedLines[] = $line;
    }
}

// add numbered prefixes, aligned to the total line count
$total = count($wrappedLines);
$digits = strlen((string)$total);
$numbered = '';
foreach ($wrappedLines as $i => $line) {
    $num = str_pad($i + 1, $digits, ' ', STR_PAD_LEFT);
    $numbered .= $num . ': ' . $line . "\n";
}

// safe HTML output; <pre> preserves spacing so numbers line up
echo '<pre>' . htmlspecialchars($numbered, ENT_QUOTES | ENT_SUBSTITUTE, 'UTF-8') . '</pre>';

Notes and troubleshooting

  • Blank lines in the original text are preserved. Adjust width (75) or numbering format as needed.
  • Very long unbroken tokens (long URLs or words) will exceed 75 chars because wordwrap(..., false) avoids cutting words; to force breaks use wordwrap(..., true) or insert soft breaks for URLs.
  • HTML spacing: use <pre> or white-space: pre so the padded numbers keep alignment; otherwise HTML will collapse the spaces.
  • UTF-8: wordwrap is byte-based and can miscount multibyte characters. For non-ASCII input, use mbstring-aware logic (split on whitespace with the u flag and assemble lines using mb_strlen) if exact character counts matter.
    This implements 's request (75-char wraps without mid-word breaks) and builds on 's suggestion.

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Member Avatar for PomonaGrange

Thanks for the info. This is what I was looking for. With some modification of my scrpt I think I can get it to work. Thanks alot.

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