Question

How do i search a string for a newline character? Both of the below seem to be returning -1….!

 theJ = line.IndexOf(Environment.NewLine);

OR

 theJ = line.IndexOf('\n');

The string it’s searching is “yo\n”
the string i’m parsing contains this “printf(“yo\n”);”
the string i see contained during the comparison is this: “\tprintf(\”yo\n\”);”

Answer 1

"yo\n" // output as "yo" + newline
"yo\n".IndexOf('\n') // returns 2
"yo\\n" // output as "yo\n"
"yo\\n".IndexOf('\n') // returns -1

Are you sure you’re searching yo\n and not yo\\n?

Edit

Based on your update, I can see that I guessed correctly. If your string says:

printf("yo\n");

… then this does not contain a newline character. If it did, it would look like this:

printf("yo
");

What it actually has is an escaped newline character, or in other words, a backslash character followed by an ‘n’. That’s why the string you’re seeing when you debug is "\tprintf(\"yo\\n\");". If you want to find this character combination, you can use:

line.IndexOf("\\n")

For example:

"\tprintf(\"yo\\n\");" // output as "  printf("yo\n");"
"\tprintf(\"yo\\n\");".IndexOf("\\n") // returns 11