New line in php using symbols 
 or 

After years of trying to understand why simple "\n" or "\r\n" doesn't convert to <br />
when parsing it with nl2br function, I decided to use simple "&#x000a;" (Line feed) or " &#x000d;"  (Carriage return) symbol.

So, instead of coding like this:
$text="my old string \n";
Just use:
$text="my new string  &#x000a;";  UPDATE: The best way for new line use PHP_EOL