Environment.NewLine

A newline on Windows equals "\r\n." To add newlines in a C# string, there are a couple options—and the best option may depend on your program.

There is a constant from the base class library and the actual string literal. We review these newline options.

Platform example

We can run "dotnet" programs through the command-line on Linux. With this platform, a NewLine is just 1 character, not 2 like on Windows.

using System;

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        // Run on Linux.
        var result = Environment.NewLine.Length;
        Console.WriteLine(result);
    }
}
1

Concat example

Here we need to create a string with a line break in the middle of it, which will form a 2-line string. We will use the Environment.NewLine constant for this.

using System;

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        // Use string concat to combine two literals with the newline constant.
        string s = "First line" + Environment.NewLine + "Second line";
        Console.WriteLine(s);
    }
}
First line
Second line

Literal example

You do not need to use Environment.NewLine as in the first example. You can use the "\r\n" constant directly—this may be a better choice.

using System;

class Program
{
    static void Main()
    {
        // Concat literals.
        string s = "One line" + "\r\n" + "Another line";
        Console.WriteLine(s);
    }
}
One line
Another line

Implementation

Environment.NewLine is a constant property in .NET. And it could be tied to the current executing environment or platform.

L_000b: call string [mscorlib]System.Environment::get_NewLine()
.method public hidebysig specialname static string get_NewLine()
    cil managed
{
    .maxstack 8
    L_0000: ldstr "\r\n"
    L_0005: ret
}

Notes, IL

The above IL is generated when you use NewLine. The "get_" part indicates that the value is fetched from a property. This is inlined so has no performance penalty.

We used the Environment.NewLine constant in the C# language. Some developers find the Environment.NewLine constant has more clarity in their code.