What are some best practices for handling text formatting from PDF files to a database in PHP, considering manual line breaks and separators?

When extracting text from PDF files to store in a database using PHP, it's important to handle manual line breaks and separators correctly to maintain the formatting of the text. One approach is to replace manual line breaks with a standard newline character and use specific separators to distinguish different sections of the text.

// Sample code to handle text formatting from PDF files to a database in PHP

// Function to process text from PDF and store in database
function processPDFText($pdfText) {
    // Replace manual line breaks with newline character
    $formattedText = str_replace("\r\n", "\n", $pdfText);

    // Use specific separators to split text into different sections
    $sections = explode("SECTION_SEPARATOR", $formattedText);

    // Store each section in the database
    foreach ($sections as $section) {
        // Insert $section into the database
    }
}

// Sample PDF text with manual line breaks and separators
$pdfText = "This is a sample text.\r\nSECTION_SEPARATOR\r\nThis is another section.";

// Process and store text in the database
processPDFText($pdfText);