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Re: What's Wrong With Newlines?

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Computer Nerd Kev <not@telling.you.invalid> wrote:
> Rich <rich@example.invalid> wrote:
>> Computer Nerd Kev <not@telling.you.invalid> wrote:
>>> Increasingly web forms for sending general messages to people 
>>> (usually in place of Email) seem to deliberately reject all the 
>>> newlines that I attempt to put into them.  It seems to be deliberate, 
>> 
>> It is deliberate.
>> 
>> The html textarea form field submits the line ending characters you 
>> type into the box to the server when the web form is posted.
> 
> Yes, I've never had any problem with disappearing newlines from
> textareas when designing pages myself, nor would I expect one.
> 
>> So if the line break characters disappear when you submit, it means the 
>> programmers are stripping them out somewhere (either locally with 
>> javascript as part of the submission, or on the server side after the 
>> data from the text area is sent over there).
> 
> My uncertainty was over whether there might be some standard function
> or method of handling a web form, which when abused in a certain way
> results in this behaviour.

I'm not aware of any bog-standard way to obtain the contents of a text 
area sans line ending characters.

However, it may be possible that "web framework du-jour of the month" 
that these developers utilized comes with a JS function that performs 
a: "get text area contents, strip newlines".

It is also possible that what you are seeing is an unintended 
consequence of an over-zealous "character sanitizer" trying to prevent 
cross site scripting exploits (and doing it wrong, by the way).  If the 
filter is "strip out all but [A-Za-z0-9,.] or something like that, then 
you get line ending characters being stripped out needlessly, simply 
because the developer didn't think through the ramifications of their 
sanitizer filter.

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Thread

What's Wrong With Newlines? Computer Nerd Kev <not@telling.you.invalid> - 2019-03-29 01:59 +0000
  Re: What's Wrong With Newlines? Dan Espen <dan1espen@gmail.com> - 2019-03-28 23:31 -0400
    Re: What's Wrong With Newlines? not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) - 2019-03-29 23:22 +0000
      Re: What's Wrong With Newlines? Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> - 2019-03-29 21:58 -0300
        Re: What's Wrong With Newlines? Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2019-03-30 11:23 +0000
        Re: What's Wrong With Newlines? RS Wood <rsw@therandymon.com> - 2019-03-30 09:02 -0400
        Re: What's Wrong With Newlines? Kees Nuyt <k.nuyt@nospam.demon.nl> - 2019-03-30 15:24 +0100
  Re: What's Wrong With Newlines? Huge <Huge@nowhere.much.invalid> - 2019-03-29 09:32 +0000
    Re: What's Wrong With Newlines? Bob Eager <news0073@eager.cx> - 2019-03-29 09:44 +0000
      Re: What's Wrong With Newlines? not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) - 2019-03-29 23:07 +0000
  Re: What's Wrong With Newlines? Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2019-03-29 21:26 +0000
    Re: What's Wrong With Newlines? not@telling.you.invalid (Computer Nerd Kev) - 2019-03-29 22:56 +0000
      Re: What's Wrong With Newlines? Computer Nerd Kev <not@telling.you.invalid> - 2019-03-30 00:21 +0000
        Re: What's Wrong With Newlines? Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2019-03-30 14:37 +0000
          Re: What's Wrong With Newlines? Computer Nerd Kev <not@telling.you.invalid> - 2019-04-17 07:04 +0000
            Re: What's Wrong With Newlines? Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2019-04-17 12:23 +0000
      Re: What's Wrong With Newlines? Rich <rich@example.invalid> - 2019-03-30 14:33 +0000
    Re: What's Wrong With Newlines? scott@alfter.diespammersdie.us (Scott Alfter) - 2019-04-01 16:10 +0000

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