Single statement across multiple lines in VB NET without the underscore character

Question

Is there a 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  can t do this               select a articleName   dim createArticle as string          Create table article    amp              articleID int    amp              articleName varchar 50     amp

User · Accepted Answer

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

User · Answer

Not sure if you can do that with multi-line code  but multi-line variables can be done   Multiline strings in VB NET  Here is the relevant chunk   I figured out how to use both  lt   CDATA  along with  lt    for variables  which allows you to code without worry   You basically have to terminate the CDATA tags before the VB variable and then re-add it after so the CDATA does not capture the VB code   You need to wrap the entire code block in a tag because you will you have multiple CDATA blocks   Dim script As String    lt code gt  lt   CDATA     lt script type  text javascript  gt      var URL       gt  lt    domain   gt  lt   CDATA  mypage html      lt  script gt    gt   lt  code gt  value

User · Answer

Starting with VB NET 10  implicit line continuation is supported for a number of syntax elements  see Statements in Visual Basic  Continuing a Statement over Multiple Lines   The concatenation operator   amp   is in the list of syntax elements  that support implicit line continuation  Interspersed comments are supported as well  so your second example could be rewritten as   dim createArticle as string         Create table article    amp            articleID int    amp              Comment for articleID           articleName varchar 50     amp    Comment for articleName               Implicit line continuation also works for query operators  with a few restrictions      Before and after query operators  Aggregate  Distinct  From  Group By  Group Join  Join  Let  Order By  Select  Skip  Skip While  Take  Take While  Where  In  Into  On  Ascending  and Descending   You cannot break a line between the keywords of query operators that are made up of multiple keywords  Order By  Group Join  Take While  and Skip While     Again  interspersed comments are allowed  so your first example can be rewritten as   dim results   from a in articles               where a articleID   4    articleID - now perfectly legal               select a articleName

User · Answer

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  -

User · Answer

You can use XML literals to sort of do this   Dim s    lt sql gt    Create table article    articleID int  -- sql comment    articleName varchar 50    lt comment text  here s an xml comment    gt       lt  sql gt  Value   warning  XML text rules apply  like  amp amp  for ampersand   amp lt  for  lt   etc   Dim alertText    Hello World  Dim js    lt script gt              document  ready function                alert   lt    alertText   gt                             lt  script gt  ToString   instead of  Value includes  lt script gt  tag   note  the above is problematic when it includes characters that need to be escaped  Better to use   lt script gt   js Value   lt  script gt

User · Answer

Starting with VB NET 10  implicit line continuation is supported for a number of syntax elements  see Statements in Visual Basic  Continuing a Statement over Multiple Lines   The concatenation operator   amp   is in the list of syntax elements  that support implicit line continuation  Interspersed comments are supported as well  so your second example could be rewritten as   dim createArticle as string         Create table article    amp            articleID int    amp              Comment for articleID           articleName varchar 50     amp    Comment for articleName               Implicit line continuation also works for query operators  with a few restrictions      Before and after query operators  Aggregate  Distinct  From  Group By  Group Join  Join  Let  Order By  Select  Skip  Skip While  Take  Take While  Where  In  Into  On  Ascending  and Descending   You cannot break a line between the keywords of query operators that are made up of multiple keywords  Order By  Group Join  Take While  and Skip While     Again  interspersed comments are allowed  so your first example can be rewritten as   dim results   from a in articles               where a articleID   4    articleID - now perfectly legal               select a articleName

User · Answer

Not sure if you can do that with multi-line code  but multi-line variables can be done   Multiline strings in VB NET  Here is the relevant chunk   I figured out how to use both  lt   CDATA  along with  lt    for variables  which allows you to code without worry   You basically have to terminate the CDATA tags before the VB variable and then re-add it after so the CDATA does not capture the VB code   You need to wrap the entire code block in a tag because you will you have multiple CDATA blocks   Dim script As String    lt code gt  lt   CDATA     lt script type  text javascript  gt      var URL       gt  lt    domain   gt  lt   CDATA  mypage html      lt  script gt    gt   lt  code gt  value

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

I know that this has an accepted answer  but it is the top article I found when searching for this question  and it is very out of date now  I did a little more research  and this MSDN article contains a list of syntax elements that implicitly continue the statement on the next line of code for VB Net 2010

User · Answer

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  -

User · Answer

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  -

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

I know that this has an accepted answer  but it is the top article I found when searching for this question  and it is very out of date now  I did a little more research  and this MSDN article contains a list of syntax elements that implicitly continue the statement on the next line of code for VB Net 2010

User · Answer

You can use XML literals to sort of do this   Dim s    lt sql gt    Create table article    articleID int  -- sql comment    articleName varchar 50    lt comment text  here s an xml comment    gt       lt  sql gt  Value   warning  XML text rules apply  like  amp amp  for ampersand   amp lt  for  lt   etc   Dim alertText    Hello World  Dim js    lt script gt              document  ready function                alert   lt    alertText   gt                             lt  script gt  ToString   instead of  Value includes  lt script gt  tag   note  the above is problematic when it includes characters that need to be escaped  Better to use   lt script gt   js Value   lt  script gt

User · Answer

For most multiline strings using an XML element with an inner CDATA block is easier to avoid having to escape anything for simple raw string data   Dim s as string    lt s gt  lt   CDATA Line 1 line 2 line 3   gt  lt  s gt  Value   Note that I ve seen many people state the same format but without the wrapping   lt  s    tag  just the CDATA block  but visual studio Automatic formatting seams to alter the leading whitespace of each line then   I think this is due to the object inheritance structure behind the Linq  X  objects  CDATA is not a  Container   the outer block is an XElement which inherits from XContainer

User · Answer

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  -

User · Answer

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

User · Answer

For most multiline strings using an XML element with an inner CDATA block is easier to avoid having to escape anything for simple raw string data   Dim s as string    lt s gt  lt   CDATA Line 1 line 2 line 3   gt  lt  s gt  Value   Note that I ve seen many people state the same format but without the wrapping   lt  s    tag  just the CDATA block  but visual studio Automatic formatting seams to alter the leading whitespace of each line then   I think this is due to the object inheritance structure behind the Linq  X  objects  CDATA is not a  Container   the outer block is an XElement which inherits from XContainer

[vb.net] Single statement across multiple lines in VB.NET without the underscore character

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