Fn:replace JSTL tag trick for replacing carrige returns....how?

Question

Hi
I have some <textarea> input that I would like to format for display.
My question is: How can I use fn:replace tag to replace carriage returns to
so that formatted input looks like exactly as entered in by user?
Doing string.replaceAll("\r\n|\n","<br/>"); works fine from within a servlet but not if use fn:replace.....This is what I tried
                    <c:set var="msg" value="${param.message}"/>
                    ${fn:replace(msg, "\\r\\n|\\n", "<br/>")}This doesn't work...
I have to use double backslashes in fn:replace - otherwise I get JSTL error.
Can someone tell me what am I doing wrong...
Thanks

Answer 1

I have some <textarea> input that I would like to format for display.
My question is: How can I use fn:replace tag to replace carriage returns to
so that formatted input looks like exactly as entered in by user?One misconception here: the fn:replace tag does NOT use regular expressions to do its replacement. It is a simple replace "x" with "y" function.
<% pageContext.setAttribute("carriagereturn","\n"); %>If you're going to do this, at least use System.getProperty("line.separator") rather than assuming it is \n.
A better solution IMO is to use <pre> tags around the text you want to print out preformatted. It avoids the whole need to convert carriage returns into <BR> tags.