Multiline string literal in C

Question

Is there an easy way to create a multiline string literal in C    Here s what I have now   string query    SELECT foo  bar      FROM table      WHERE id   42     I know PHP has   lt  lt  lt BLOCK  BLOCK    Does C  have something similar

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If you don t want spaces newlines  string addition seems to work   var myString   String Format     hello         world        i am  0         and I like  1       animalType    animalPreferenceType       hello world i am a pony and I like other ponies    You can run the above here if you like

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Yes  you can split a string out onto multiple lines without introducing newlines into the actual string  but it aint pretty   string s      This string  string Empty  contains no newlines  string Empty  even though it is spread onto  string Empty  multiple lines      The trick is to introduce code that evaluates to empty  and that code may contain newlines without affecting the output  I adapted this approach from this answer to a similar question   There is apparently some confusion as to what the question is  but there are two hints that what we want here is a string literal not containing any newline characters  whose definition spans multiple lines   in the comments he says so  and  here s what I have  shows code that does not create a string with newlines in it   This unit test shows the intent        TestMethod      public void StringLiteralDoesNotContainSpaces                 string query    hi                          there           Assert AreEqual  hithere   query           Change the above definition of query so that it is one string literal  instead of the concatenation of two string literals which may or may not be optimized into one by the compiler   The C   approach would be to end each line with a backslash  causing the newline character to be escaped and not appear in the output  Unfortunately  there is still then the issue that each line after the first must be left aligned in order to not add additional whitespace to the result   There is only one option that does not rely on compiler optimizations that might not happen  which is to put your definition on one line  If you want to rely on compiler optimizations  the   you already have is great  you don t have to left-align the string  you don t get newlines in the result  and it s just one operation  no function calls  to expect optimization on

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As a side-note  with C  6 0 you can now combine interpolated strings with the verbatim string literal   string camlCondition        lt Where gt       lt Contains gt           lt FieldRef Name  Resource   gt           lt Value Type  Text  gt   string parameter  lt  Value gt       lt  Contains gt   lt  Where gt

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One other gotcha to watch for is the use of string literals in string Format  In that case you need to escape curly braces brackets     and           this would give a format exception string Format    lt script gt  function test x           return x    0     lt  script gt    aMagicValue     this contrived example would work string Format    lt script gt  function test x            return x    0      lt  script gt    aMagicValue

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The problem with using string literal I find is that it can make your code look a bit  weird  because in order to not get spaces in the string itself  it has to be completely left aligned         var someString     The quick brown fox        Yuck   So the solution I like to use  which keeps everything nicely aligned with the rest of your code is   var someString   String Join      Environment NewLine       The        quick        brown        fox         And of course  if you just want to logically split up lines of an SQL statement like you are and don t actually need a new line  you can always just substitute Environment NewLine for

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You can use   and              string sourse                 items                             itemId   0                name     item0                                      itemId   1                name     item1

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Add multiple lines   use    string query     SELECT foo  bar FROM table WHERE id   42     Add String Values to the middle    use    string text   beer   string query     SELECT foo  text  bar      Multiple line string Add Values to the middle   use     string text   Customer   string query      SELECT foo  bar FROM  text Table WHERE id   42

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Why do people keep confusing strings with string literals  The accepted answer is a great answer to a different question  not to this one   I know this is an old topic  but I came here with possibly the same question as the OP  and it is frustrating to see how people keep misreading it  Or maybe I am misreading it  I don t know   Roughly speaking  a string is a region of computer memory that  during the execution of a program  contains a sequence of bytes that can be mapped to text characters  A string literal  on the other hand  is a piece of source code  not yet compiled  that represents the value used to initialize a string later on  during the execution of the program in which it appears   In C   the statement      string query    SELECT foo  bar       FROM table       WHERE id   42         does not produce a three-line string but a one liner  the concatenation of three strings  each initialized from a different literal  none of which contains a new-line modifier   What the OP seems to be asking -at least what I would be asking with those words- is not how to introduce  in the compiled string  line breaks that mimick those found in the source code  but how to break up for clarity a long  single line of text in the source code without introducing breaks in the compiled string  And without requiring an extended execution time  spent joining the multiple substrings coming from the source code  Like the trailing backslashes within a multiline string literal in javascript or C     Suggesting the use of verbatim strings  nevermind StringBuilders  String Joins or even nested functions with string reversals and what not  makes me think that people are not really understanding the question  Or maybe I do not understand it   As far as I know  C  does not  at least in the paleolithic version I am still using  from the previous decade  have a feature to cleanly produce multiline string literals that can be resolved during compilation rather than execution   Maybe current versions do support it  but I thought I d share the difference I perceive between strings and string literals   UPDATE    From MeowCat2012 s comment  You can  The     approach by OP is the best  According to spec the optimization is guaranteed  http   stackoverflow com a 288802 9399618

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It s called a verbatim string literal in C   and it s just a matter of putting   before the literal  Not only does this allow multiple lines  but it also turns off escaping  So for example you can do   string query     SELECT foo  bar FROM table WHERE name    a b      This includes the line breaks  using whatever line break your source has them as  into the string  however  For SQL  that s not only harmless but probably improves the readability anywhere you see the string - but in other places it may not be required  in which case you d either need to not use a multi-line verbatim string literal to start with  or remove them from the resulting string   The only bit of escaping is that if you want a double quote  you have to add an extra double quote symbol   string quote     Jon said    This will work    - and it did

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I haven t seen this  so I will post it here  if you are interested in passing a string you can do this as well   The idea is that you can break the string up on multiple lines and add your own content  also on multiple lines  in any way you wish  Here  tableName  can be passed into the string       private string createTableQuery            void createTable string tableName                  createTableQuery     CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS                     tableName                          ID  INTEGER NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT                   Key  NVARCHAR 2048   NULL                   Value  VARCHAR 2048   NULL

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You can use the   symbol in front of a string to form a verbatim string literal   string query     SELECT foo  bar FROM table WHERE id   42     You also do not have to escape special characters when you use this method  except for double quotes as shown in Jon Skeet s answer

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