Question

I have a class with a member “Address” that I read from an XML file that has the following format(fake address – The XML field name is “Address” – not shown):

106-1190 Crescent St. \r\n Toronto Ont \r\n V2K 2Z6

I have created a Multi-Line Textbox to display in a form with the Accepts-Return property set to true.

The Textbox displays the following with the new-line characters not working

106-1190 Crescent St. \r\n Toronto Ont \r\n V2K 2Z6

I’ve looked online for various solutions and I have tried the following:

1) \n and \\n

2) \\r\\n

It works if I add to the property directly like so:

Address.Text = "106-1190 Crescent St.\r\nToronto Ont\r\nV2K 2Z6";

But if I load a string variable from an XML file and try to assign it to the Text property:

Address.Text = Employee.Address;

It does not work.

I set watch points to check the difference between the direct assignment and the variable assignment ang got this difference:

Direct: 106-1190 Crescent St. \r\n Toronto Ont \r\n V2K 2Z6

Variable: 106-1190 Crescent St. \\r\\n Toronto Ont \\r\\n V2K 2Z6

so somewhere the code is changing the backslash to a double backslash in converting from the XML string to the variable.

I don’t really want to have to parse my XML strings to remove the extra slash….
How do I represent my string data in an XML file such that it gets converted to a proper string variable with just the single slash, in order for my line breaks to show up properly.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The textbox control doesn’t interpret escapes and neither does XML. so this is just the characters \ r and n. You need to process the string, substituting the string @”\r\n” for “\r\n”.

Address.Text = Employee.Address.Replace(@"\r\n", "\r\n");

this is the equivalent to this

Address.Text = Employee.Address.Replace("\\r\\n", "\r\n");

because @ prevents interpreting of \ in the string.

edit: based on a comment, this is even better form, it translates to \n on unix, and \r\n on Windows.

Address.Text = Employee.Address.Replace("\\r\\n", Environment.NewLine);