title: Wordpress parses wp_posts.post_content before rendering?
body: <p>I noticed that when I call the the_post() or the_content() function from my wordpress template, it automatically parses the database data to replace new lines with <code>&lt;br/&gt;</code>, wraps the text with <code>&lt;p&gt;</code> tags etc...There's probably some kind of "format" function within the_post() or the_content().</p>
  
  <p>I wrote a query to directly get posts from the wp_posts.  I then print it out like</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;?php
  $results = $wp-&gt;get_results($sql)
  foreach($results as $row) echo $row-&gt;post_content; ?&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Clearly, this data is not parsed by wordpress' "format" function.  What is the proper way to output this content such that it undergoes the same "formatting" functions as the_post() or the_content()?</p>