VB.NET Single statement across multiple lines

Question

Is there any way to have a statement across multiple lines without the underscore character? It is really annoying in multi-line strings such as SQL statements, and especially LINQ queries.

Beside from the ugliness and difficulty when changing a line (nothing lines up anymore) you can't use comments in the middle of the multi-line statement.

Examples of my daily personal hell.

dim results = from a in articles _
              where a.articleID = 4 _ ' articleID     - Nope, cant do this
              select a.articleName


dim createArticle as string = _ 
    "Create table article " & _
    "    (articleID int " & _
    "    ,articleName varchar(50) " & _
    "    )"

Answer 1

I will say no.

But the only proof that I have is personal experience and the fact that documentation on line continuation doesn't have anything else in it.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa711641(VS.71).aspx

Answer 2

VB uses line break as the statement terminator. There is no way to change it (it's like asking C# not to expect ; at the end of statements). There is a solution however, you can always switch to C#!

Answer 3

No, the underscore is the only continuation character. Personally I prefer the occasional use of a continuation character to being forced to use it always as in C#, but apart from the comments issue (which I'd agree is sometimes annoying), getting things to line up is not an issue.

With VS2008 at any rate, just select the second and following lines, hit the tab key several times, and it moves the whole lot across.

If it goes a tiny bit too far, you can delete the excess space a character at a time. It's a little fiddly, but it stays put once it's saved.

On the rare cases where this isn't good enough, I sometimes use the following technique to get it all to line up:

dim results as String = ""
results += "from a in articles "
results += "where a.articleID = 4 " 'and now you can add comments
results += "select a.articleName"

It's not perfect, and I know those that prefer C# will be tut-tutting, but there it is. It's a style choice, but I still prefer it to endless semi-colons.

Now I'm just waiting for someone to tell me I should have used a StringBuilder ;-)

Answer 4

No, you have to use the underscore, but I believe that VB.NET 10 will allow multiple lines w/o the underscore, only requiring if it can't figure out where the end should be.

Answer 5

You can't do that then the datatype of the phrase is a string and will not be compiled as a LINQ statement?

Answer 6

You can use XML literals to sort of do this:

Dim s = <sql>
  Create table article
  (articleID int  -- sql comment
  ,articleName varchar(50)  <comment text="here's an xml comment" />
  )
</sql>.Value

warning: XML text rules apply, like &amp; for ampersand, &lt; for <, etc.

Dim alertText = "Hello World"
Dim js = <script>
          $(document).ready(function() {
           alert('<%= alertText %>');
          });
         </script>.ToString  'instead of .Value includes <script> tag

note: the above is problematic when it includes characters that need to be escaped. Better to use "<script>"+js.Value+"</script>"