Converting <br /> into a new line for use in a text area

Question

If I have a variable:

$var1 = "Line 1 info blah blah <br /> Line 2 info blah blah"; 

And a text area:

<textarea>echo $var1</textarea> 

How can I get the text area to display a new line instead of displaying the text on a single like with a <br /> in it?

Edit: I have tried the following:

<textarea class="hobbieTalk" id="hobbieTalk" name="hobbieTalk" cols="35" rows="5" onchange="contentHandler('userInterests',this.id,this.value,0)"><?php  $convert=$_SESSION["hobbieTalk"]; $convert = str_replace("<br />", "\n", $convert); echo $convert;  ?></textarea> 

However the text area still contains the br tags in the lines.

Answer 1

Try this one

<?php     $text = "Hello <br /> Hello again <br> Hello again again <br/> Goodbye <BR>";     $breaks = array("<br />","<br>","<br/>");       $text = str_ireplace($breaks, "\r\n", $text);   ?>   <textarea><?php echo $text; ?></textarea> 

Answer 2

i am use following construction to convert back nl2br

function br2nl( $input ) {     return preg_replace('/<br\s?\/?>/ius', "\n", str_replace("\n","",str_replace("\r","", htmlspecialchars_decode($input)))); } 

here i replaced \n and \r symbols from $input because nl2br dosen't remove them and this causes wrong output with \n\n or \r<br>.