Home/ Questions/Q 367031
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-12T13:41:21+00:00

What end-of-line identifier should I use (for example, for output to text files)? There

  • 0

What end-of-line identifier should I use (for example, for output to text files)?

There are many choices:

  • vbCrLf
  • vbNewLine (apparently an alias of vbCrLf)
  • ControlChars.CrLf
  • ControlChars.NewLine
  • Environment.NewLine
  • A static member in some C# class in the application (requires mixed-language solution): public static string LINEEND = “\r\n”;
  • Global.Microsoft.VisualBasic.ChrW(13) & Global.Microsoft.VisualBasic.ChrW(10) (generated by the Visual Studio designer, at least Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition, for a TextBox with property Multiline set to True when Shift + Return is used while editing property Text.)

What is best practice?

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I believe it generally makes most sense to use Environment.NewLine as the new-line identifier, for a number of reasons:

    • It is an environment-dependent read-only variable. If you happen to be running your program on Linux (for example), then the value will simply be \n.
    • vbCrLf is a legacy constant from the VB6 and earlier languages. Also, it’s not environment-independent.
    • \r\n has the same issue of not being environment-dependent, and also can’t be done nicely in VB.NET (you’d have to assign a variable to Chr(13) & Chr(10)).
    • Controls exists in the Microsoft.VisualBasic namespace, effectively making it a legacy/backwards-compatibility option, like vbCrLf. Always stay clear of legacy code if possible.
    • 0