What are potential pitfalls when using str_replace in PHP to replace HTML line breaks with new line characters?

When using str_replace in PHP to replace HTML line breaks with new line characters, a potential pitfall is that HTML line breaks can be represented in different ways (e.g. <br>, <br/>, <br />, or \n). To ensure all variations are replaced, it's recommended to use the PHP function nl2br() to convert HTML line breaks to new line characters. This function will handle all possible HTML line break representations and convert them to the appropriate new line character.

// Example code snippet using nl2br() to replace HTML line breaks with new line characters
$htmlString = "This is a <br> test <br/> with <br /> HTML line breaks";
$textWithNewLines = nl2br($htmlString);

echo $textWithNewLines;