Question

This is probably really obvious and I’m being dense. In C# I can do this:

string = @"this is 
            some preformatted 
            text";

How do I do this in VB?

Answer 1

There isn’t one.

In C# you have the ability to do something like this “This ends in a new line\n.”, but in VB there’s no concept of that, you have predefined variables that handle that for you like “This ends in a new line” & vbNewLine

Hence, there’s no point in a string literal (@”something\n”) because in VB it would be interpreted literally anyway.

The problem with VB .NET is that a statement is deemed terminated at the end of a line, so you can’t do this

Dim _someString as String = "Look at me
  I've wrapped my string
    on multiple lines"

You’re forced to terminate your string on every line and use an underscore to indicate you wish to continue your statement, which makes you do something like

Dim _someString as String = "Look at me " & vbNewLine &_
   "*** add indentation here *** I've wrapped my string " & vbNewLine &_
   vbTab & " on multiple lines" '<- alternate way to indent