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c#stringsyntaxmultiline

Best way to split string into lines

How do you split multi-line string into lines?

I know this way

var result = input.Split("\n\r".ToCharArray(), StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);

looks a bit ugly and loses empty lines. Is there a better solution?

Solution

    • If it looks ugly, just remove the unnecessary ToCharArray call.

    • If you want to split by either \n or \r, you've got two options:

      • Use an array literal – but this will give you empty lines for Windows-style line endings \r\n:

        var result = text.Split(new [] { '\r', '\n' });

      • Use a regular expression, as indicated by Bart:

        var result = Regex.Split(text, "\r\n|\r|\n");

    • If you want to preserve empty lines, why do you explicitly tell C# to throw them away? (StringSplitOptions parameter) – use StringSplitOptions.None instead.