Question

I have a multi-line ASCII string coming from some (Windows/UNIX/…) system. Now, I know about differences in newline character in Windows and UNIX (CR-LF / LF) and I want to parse this string on both (CR and LF) characters to detect which newline character(s) is used in this string, so I need to know what “\n” in VS6 C++ means.

My question is if I write a peace of code in Visual Studio 6 for Windows:

bool FindNewline (string & inputString) {
    size_t found;
    found = inputString.find ("\n");
    return (found != string::npos ? true : false);
}

does this searches for CR+LF or only LF? Should I put “\r\n” or compiler interprets “\n” like CR+LF?

Answer 1

inputString.find ("\n");

will search for the LF character (alone).

Library routines may ‘translate’ between CR/LF and ‘\n’ when I/O is performed on a text stream, but inside the realm of your program code, ‘\n’ is just a line-feed.