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" />

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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

Answer 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" />

Answer 4

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.

Answer 5

I was wondering if something like this would work:

<cfset str = CreateObject("java", "java.lang.String").init("Line 1\nLine 2\nLine 3")>

<cfoutput>
<pre>#str#</pre>
</cfoutput>

Alas no :O(