Usually, I use nl2br() and it does come out just like it's entered in the textarea, but this causes a problem when using bbcode or posting code in <code> or <pre> tags, since it adds extra line breaks.
For example this code
[sub-title]test[/sub-title]
some text here.
I'd like it to look like that when displayed in the browser, but because [sub-title] becomes <div class="sub-title"> the <br /> adds an extra line break, so it will look like this (with 2 line breaks in between)
**test**
some text here.
I haven't fully looked into it yet, but could the PHP bbcode parser help, or is the only/best solution to use regex?
You can use nl2br()
Example
$message = nl2br(preg_replace('#(\\]{1})(\\s?)\
#Usi', ']', stripslashes($message)));