C# TextWriter inserting line break every 1024 characters

Question

Hi all,

I'm using the textwriter to write data to a text file but if the line exceeds 1024 characters a line break is inserted and this is a problem for me. Any suggestions on how to work round this or increase the character limit?

textWriter.WriteLine(strOutput);

Many thanks

Answer 1

Use Write, not WriteLine

Answer 2

Well you're using TextWriter.WriteLine(string) which appends \r\n after strOutput. As the docs say:

Writes a string followed by a line terminator to the text stream.

(Emphasis mine.) That has nothing to do with 1024 characters though - my guess is that that's how you're reading it in (e.g. with a buffer of 1024 characters).

To avoid the extra line break, just use

textWriter.Write(strOutput);

EDIT: You say in the comment that you need a line break after "the full line has been written out" - but it sounds like strOutput isn't always the same line.

I suspect the easiest way of accomplishing what you want is to separate the "copying" side out from the "line break" side. Use Write for all the text you want to copy, and then just call

textWriter.WriteLine();

when you want a line break. If this doesn't help, I think we're going to need more context - please provide a code sample of exactly what you're doing.

Answer 3

if you need to add the line breaks at the end of your output just append them.

textWriter.Write(strOutput +"\r\n");

Answer 4

I wrote a sample app that writes and read a 1025 character string. The size never changes. Although if I opened it with notepad.exe (Windows) I can see the extra character in the second line. These seems like a notepad limitation. Here is my sample code

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        using (TextWriter streamWriter = new StreamWriter("lineLimit.txt")) {
            String s=String.Empty;
            for(int i=0;i<1025;i++){
                s+= i.ToString().Substring(0,1);
            }
            streamWriter.Write(s);
            streamWriter.Close();
        }
        using (TextReader streamReader = new StreamReader("lineLimit.txt"))
        {
            String s = streamReader.ReadToEnd();
            streamReader.Close();
            Console.Out.Write(s.Length);
        }
    }