Groovy string output on multiple lines without space

Question

I have following string with a lot of characters as an example with Groovy:

def test = '''aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
              bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb
              cccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc'''    
println test

Current output:

'aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
               bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb
               ccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc

Expected output:

How could I modify this instead to print like this so that there would not be those spaces on the left on lines 2 and 3?

 aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
 bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb
 ccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc

I found about line continuation character \ but it seemed that it did not affect output in expected way.

I have also tried at least like this:

def test = 'aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa' +
            'bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb' +
            'cccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc'    

println test

Output with that was:

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaabbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbcccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc

My actual use case would be longer descriptions written to Jenkinsfile for couple of parameters and faced this originally there on Jenkins-pipeline but reproduced with this short Groovy-example.

Answer 1

You have a few options:

1. Just don't line your string up in the editor:

def test = '''aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb
ccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc'''

2. Use stripMargin and the | character:

def test = '''aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
             |bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb
             |ccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc'''.stripMargin()    

3. Use stripIndent and an escape char:

def test = '''\
             aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
             bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb
             ccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc'''.stripIndent()    

I almost exclusively use 2 as it's the happy place between readable and obvious