How can I write a newline in a string in ColdFusion?

Question

Currently I'm putting newlines in strings through one of these two methods:

<cfset someStr="This is line 1" & Chr(10) & "This is line 2" & Chr(10) & "This is line 3" />

OR

<cfset NL=Chr(10) />
<cfset someStr="This is line 1#NL#This is line 2#NL#This is line 3" />

Is there anything more like the Java/C++ way? Something more like this I mean:

<cfset someStr="This is line 1\nThis is line 2\nThis is line 3" />

Solution 1

Your way is correct. There is no support for \n or \r in CF. From the Live Docs

• Chr(10) returns a linefeed character
• Chr(13) returns a carriage return character
• The two-character string Chr(13) & Chr(10) returns a Windows newline

Solution 2

If you are into platform-independent development, you can do:

<cfset NL = CreateObject("java", "java.lang.System").getProperty("line.separator")>

For example, in your application.cfm/cfc or somewhere else high-level and use that.

Solution 3

i use this:

<cfset br = "#chr(13)##chr(10)#">
<cfset someStr="This is line 1#br#This is line 2#br#This is line 3" />

Solution 4

Not directly in CF, I'll leave it to the CF-Java dudes to say whether you can use a Java method directly on a CF var to achieve what you want, but...

You could use cfsavecontent to put natural line breaks in:

<cfsavecontent variable="someStr">
This is line 1
This is line 2
This is line 3
</cfsavecontent>

Then check it with:

<cfoutput>
<pre>#Trim(someStr)#</pre>
</cfoutput>

Note that the Trim() is there to get rid of the first and last line breaks if you don't want them.

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Comments

[Tomalak]

This feeds a CF string to .init(). And a CF string does not understand "\n". That's a kind of problem I like to refer to as "can-opener in a can". :-)

[brianestey]

Marc, let's do without the quotes and #'s- <cfset br = chr(13) & chr(10) />

[Riot Goes Woof]

Just note that Chr(13) & Chr(10) doesnt work in a simple <cfoutput>. You need to have it in javascript or something else in order to get the newlines to show. I've been discovering this the fun way.

[DaEagle]

It works fine in a cfoutput for me. Of course it won't create a break in html because html treats it as just another whitespace but if you do a view source you would see the break. Maybe you just need a <br> ?

[Riot Goes Woof]

Possibly. I just wanted to report that if people are having trouble with it, like I was, they should try putting it in javascript or something to see if that fixes it.

[Vincent P]

I use this exclusively, its easy to say "we will only ever run on Windows", but it's going to be a sad day when you have to change hundreds of lines of code scattered about because you were lazy.