Message field as it appears in database:

This is a test message.

This is line 2 of test message.



#This is how I'm getting it from the database...

$SQL="SELECT * FROM table WHERE name = '$name'";
&Do_SQL;
$pointer = $sth->fetchrow_hashref;
$message = $pointer->{'message'};
$message =~ s/\n/\<br\>/g;


Output:

This is a test message.  This is line 2 of test message.


If I View Source it shows:

This is a test message.

This is line 2 of test message.
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I'm afraid that won't work

Use Data::Dumper or Data::Dump to Dump data from your program as perl structures, and then show us that

I'm wondering if I have to do something special before it gets stuffed in the database, but I don't think so.

As a general rule, you do not want to do something special before the database. You want to do something special before the email. When you need a particular encoding or alteration of your data for one use, you'll find yourself having to backtrack less often by doing that transformation as late and as local as possible.