Member Avatar for felix001

I currently have the following php :

<?php
system('/usr/bin/whois ');
?>

What is the easiest way to replace the newlines with <BR>\n.

Thanks,

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by Member #120589

Dani AI

Generated

the core issue: system() streams the command output directly to the browser and only returns the last line to $output. So nl2br($output) touches just that last line. Once you capture the full output into a string, nl2br() will do what you expect (it also handles \r\n, \n, and \r). @diafol and were right about using nl2br(); showed one way to capture. Here are two others you can drop in. (php.net)

Option A: capture with shell_exec() and escape before printing.

$target = '4.2.2.2';
$out = shell_exec('/usr/bin/whois ' . escapeshellarg($target));
echo nl2br(htmlspecialchars($out ?? '', ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8'), false);

shell_exec() returns the complete output as a string; htmlspecialchars() prevents any accidental HTML from whois data breaking your page; nl2br(..., false) emits <br> tags. (php.net)

Option B: keep system() but capture its printed output via output buffering.

$target = '4.2.2.2';
ob_start();
system('/usr/bin/whois ' . escapeshellarg($target));
$out = ob_get_clean();
echo nl2br(htmlspecialchars($out, ENT_QUOTES, 'UTF-8'), false);

Output buffering grabs what system() would have sent to the browser, so you can post-process it safely. (php.net)

Small notes:

  • Always sanitize user-supplied targets (IP/domain) with escapeshellarg() to avoid command injection. (php.net)
  • If you wrap the result in <pre>...</pre>, you usually do not need <br> tags at all since <pre> preserves newlines; choose one or the other.
  • @GreenDay2001’s str_replace() tip works, but nl2br() is aware of multiple newline conventions and is simpler for HTML output. (php.net)

Recommended Answers

All 9 Replies

Member Avatar for Member #114696

Check out str_replace() function (see here)

Edited by happygeek because: fixed formatting
Member Avatar for Member #120589 
nl2br()
Member Avatar for ko ko

Use nl2br() as @ardav stated. It automatically replace new line character (\n) with html 'br' tag. It prototype looks like:

nl2br(string);

echo nl2br("foo\nbar");    //return foo<br />bar
Member Avatar for felix001

Cool, though it seems to work using strings but it doesnt seem to work when I output the system function to it..

<?php
echo '<pre>';
$output = system('/usr/bin/whois 4.2.2.2');
echo nl2br($output);
echo '</pre>';
?>
Member Avatar for ko ko

Succeed ? Then, marks as solved.

Member Avatar for felix001

My question was how do you get nl2br to work with the output of a system command ?

Member Avatar for Insensus

Use exec instead of system and specify an empty array as the 2nd variable. This will then be filled with all the lines output by the command.
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.exec.php

$result = array();
exec('/usr/bin/whois 4.2.2.2', $result);

Now you have an array filled with all the lines, excluding trailing whitespace, of the output.
To print this with <br />'s just use

echo implode("<br />", $result);
Member Avatar for felix001

Use exec instead of system and specify an empty array as the 2nd variable. This will then be filled with all the lines output by the command.
http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.exec.php

$result = array();
exec('/usr/bin/whois 4.2.2.2', $result);

Now you have an array filled with all the lines, excluding trailing whitespace, of the output.
To print this with <br />'s just use

echo implode("<br />", $result);

Perfect .... Many Thanks...

Member Avatar for Member #120589

mark as solved if so. the link below the box.

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