Is there a way to have multiline strings in VB.NET like Python
a = """
multi
line
string
"""
or PHP?
$a = <<<END
multi
line
string
END;
Of course something that is not
"multi" & _
"line
Answer
You can use XML Literals to achieve a similar effect:
Imports System.XML
Imports System.XML.Linq
Imports System.Core
Dim s As String = <a>Hello
World</a>.Value
Remember that if you have special characters, you should use a CDATA block:
Dim s As String = <![CDATA[Hello
World & Space]]>.Value
2015 UPDATE:
Multi-line string literals were introduced in Visual Basic 14 (in Visual Studio 2015). The above example can be now written as:
Dim s As String = "Hello
World & Space"
MSDN article isn't updated yet (as of 2015-08-01), so check some answers below for details.
Details are added to the Roslyn New-Language-Features-in-VB-14 Github repository.