Line Breaks when displaying HTML

[Steven Fischer]

Here's an issue I've been working with lately. I have a bunch of text in a database, and when I display it with JSP, I want to interpret the hidden line break characters (\n, etc), as <br> tags. I have a handle on how to do it (StringTokenizer, String.indexOf()), etc., but I can't seem to search for the right sequence of characters. I thought it went like this .. line breaks on Unix were \n, line breaks on mac were \l, PC had \n\l. I guess this isn't working.
Can someone help me out?
Thanks a lot!
Steve

[Bhupinder Dhillon]

I always use these methods...

/**
 *  Replaces every occurence of an oldString with a newString in  *  the str.
 *  <P><B>Examples:</B><BLOCKQUOTE>
 *  replaceString("abcdabcd", "d", "e");
 *  <P>returns "abceabce";
 *  </BLOCKQUOTE>
 *  @param str string to manipulate.
 *  oldString old string.
 *  newString new string to replace old string with.
 *  @return a string derived from str by replacing every  *  occurrence of oldString with newString.
 */
 public static String replaceString(String str, 
                                    String oldString, 
                                    String newString) {
  if (str == null)
    return (null);
            
  StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer(str.length());
  int i = 0;
  int j = 0;
  while (i < str.length()) {
    j = str.indexOf(oldString, i); //Find the index of oldString
    if (j == -1)
      j = str.length();
                
    sb.append(str.substring(i, j));
    if (j != str.length()){
      sb.append (newString);
      i = j + oldString.length();
    } else {
      i = str.length();
    }
  }
  return (sb.toString());
}
public String replaceLineBreaks(String str){
  str = replaceString(str, "\n\r", "<br>");
  str = replaceString(str, "\n", "<br>");
  return replaceString(str, "\l", "<br>");
}

[William Brogden]

Wouldn't it be easier to use one of the input stream methods that have a readLine() method? What form does the database return the text in?
Bill

[Steven Fischer]

Thanks for your help .. Bill, to answer your question, I am getting a string using the Recordset object rcdSet.getString("dbasefield") method.

[Steven Fischer]

Bhupinder,
Your code recommendations worked out excellent. Thanks a ton!
Steve