How can line breaks in a textarea be converted into a delimiter for storage in a text file?

When storing text from a textarea into a text file, line breaks can be converted into a delimiter (such as a comma or pipe symbol) to maintain the formatting. This can be achieved by replacing the line breaks with the chosen delimiter before writing the text to the file. When retrieving the text from the file and displaying it in a textarea, the delimiter can be replaced back with line breaks to restore the original formatting. 

// Replace line breaks with a delimiter before storing in a text file
$text = $_POST['textarea_input'];
$text = str_replace("\n", "|", $text);
file_put_contents('textfile.txt', $text);

// Retrieve text from the file and replace delimiter back with line breaks
$text = file_get_contents('textfile.txt');
$text = str_replace("|", "\n", $text);
echo '<textarea>' . $text . '</textarea>';

Keywords

PHP textarea line breaks delimiter text file

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