Question

I am entering error information into an ErrorLog table in my database. I have a utility class to do this:

ErrorHandler.Error("Something has broken!!\n\nDescription");

This works fine. However, when I try to access this table, the line breaks no longer seem to be present.

If I SELECT the table:

SELECT * from ErrorLog ORDER BY ErrorDate

there are no line breaks present in the log. This is kind of expected, as line breaks in one-line rows would break the formatting. However, If I copy the data out, the line break characters have been lost, and the data is all on one line.

How do I get line breaks in data at the end of my query when I put line breaks in? I don’t know if the string has been stripped of line breaks when it enters the table, or if the viewer in SQL Server Management Studio has stripped out the line breaks.

The data type of the column into which error messages are put is nvarchar(Max), if that makes a difference.

EDIT: Unexpectedly, Pendri’s solution didn’t work.

Here is an excerpt of the string just before it passes into the SQL server:

POST /ipn/paymentResponse.ashx?installation=272&msgType=result HTTP/1.0\n\rContent-Length: 833\n\rContent-Type: 

And here is the same string when I extract it from the grid viewer in SQL Server Management Studio:

POST /ipn/paymentResponse.ashx?installation=272&msgType=result HTTP/1.0  Content-Length: 833  Content-Type:

The place where the line break should be has been double spaced.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

SSMS replaces linebreaks with spaces in the grid output. If you use Print to print the values (will go to your messages tab) then the carriage returns will be displayed there if they were stored with the data.

Example:

SELECT 'ABC' + CHAR(13) + CHAR(10) + 'DEF'
PRINT 'ABC' + CHAR(13) + CHAR(10) + 'DEF'

The first will display in a single cell in the grid without breaks, the second will print with a break to the messages pane.

A quick and easy way to print the values would be to select into a variable:

DECLARE @x varchar(100);
SELECT @x = 'ABC' + CHAR(13) + CHAR(10) + 'DEF';
PRINT @x;