How do I break a string across more than one line of code in JavaScript?

javascript line-breaks
T.T.T. picture T.T.T. · Feb 3, 2009 · Viewed 277.3k times · Source

Is there a character in JavaScript to break up a line of code so that it is read as continuous despite being on a new line?

Something like....

1. alert ( "Please Select file   
2. \ to delete" );

Answer

Michael Haren picture Michael Haren · Feb 3, 2009

In your example, you can break the string into two pieces:

alert ( "Please Select file"
 + " to delete");

Or, when it's a string, as in your case, you can use a backslash as @Gumbo suggested:

alert ( "Please Select file\
 to delete");

Note that this backslash approach is not necessarily preferred, and possibly not universally supported (I had trouble finding hard data on this). It is not in the ECMA 5.1 spec.

When working with other code (not in quotes), line breaks are ignored, and perfectly acceptable. For example:

if(SuperLongConditionWhyIsThisSoLong
  && SuperLongConditionOnAnotherLine
  && SuperLongConditionOnThirdLineSheesh)
{
    // launch_missiles();
}

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