As I learned when I posted a similar question, the textarea is likely to be giving you newlines and returns if the client is PC. So you might want something like: 
$textarea =~ s|[\r\n]|<br />|g;

[download]
Note: not sure if it's \r\n or \n\r.

In reply to Re: Simple Question for you guys. by voyager
in thread converting carriage returns to &lt;br&gt; tags (was: Simple Question for you guys) by Anonymous Monk

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