C# Environment.NewLine - Dot Net Perls

Environment.NewLine. A newline on Windows equals \r\n. To add newlines in a C# string, there are a couple options—and the best option may depend on your program.

Newline versions. There is a constant from the base class library and the actual string literal. We review these newline options.

Environment

An example. Here we need to create a string with a line break in the middle of it, which will form a 2-line string. We will use the Environment.NewLine constant for this.

Console

Note NewLine is defined by the .NET Framework and could vary by platform. But it is unlikely to ever equal a different value.

C# program that uses Environment.NewLine

using System; class Program { static void Main() { // // Use string concat to combine two literals // with the newline constant. // string s = "First line" + Environment.NewLine + "Second line"; Console.Write(s); Console.Read(); } }

First line Second line

Example 2. You don't need to use Environment.NewLine as in the first example. You can use the "\r\n" constant directly—this may be a better choice.

Note This constant changes the IL generated. It is effective on Windows platforms and is (in practical aspects) the same.

C# program that uses newline constant

using System; class Program { static void Main() { // // Use "\r\n" string in string concat. // string s = "One line" + "\r\n" + "Another line"; Console.Write(s); Console.Read(); } }

One line Another line

Call instruction

L_000b: call string [mscorlib]System.Environment::get_NewLine()

Implementation of get_NewLine

.method public hidebysig specialname static string get_NewLine() cil managed { .maxstack 8 L_0000: ldstr "\r\n" L_0005: ret }

Notes, IL. The above IL is generated when you use NewLine. The "get_" part indicates that the value is fetched from a property. This is inlined so has no performance penalty.

Property

Next We look into get_NewLine and its implementation. You can see it simply returns the "\r\n" string literal.

Tip You can find more information on the usage and implementation of string literals in the C# language on this website.

String Literal

Note It is possible that a new character set could have another constant as a line break.