Best way to split string into lines

c# string syntax multiline
Konstantin Spirin picture Konstantin Spirin · Oct 2, 2009 · Viewed 161.7k times · Source

How do you split multi-line string into lines?

I know this way

var result = input.Split("\n\r".ToCharArray(), StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);

looks a bit ugly and loses empty lines. Is there a better solution?

Answer

Konrad Rudolph picture Konrad Rudolph · Oct 2, 2009

  • If it looks ugly, just remove the unnecessary ToCharArray call.

  • If you want to split by either \n or \r, you've got two options:

    • Use an array literal – but this will give you empty lines for Windows-style line endings \r\n:

      var result = text.Split(new [] { '\r', '\n' });

    • Use a regular expression, as indicated by Bart:

      var result = Regex.Split(text, "\r\n|\r|\n");

  • If you want to preserve empty lines, why do you explicitly tell C# to throw them away? (StringSplitOptions parameter) – use StringSplitOptions.None instead.

Related questions

What does the @ prefix do on string literals in C#

I read some C# article to combine a path using Path.Combine(part1,part2). It uses the following: string part1 = @"c:\temp"; string part2 = @"assembly.txt"; May I know what is the use of @ in part1 and part2?

Read More
How can I convert String to Int?

I have a TextBoxD1.Text and I want to convert it to an int to store it in a database. How can I do this?

Read More
Convert int to string?

How can I convert an int datatype into a string datatype in C#?

Read More