In C#, what's the difference between \n and \r\n?

Question

In C#, what's the difference between \n and \r\n?

This is unrelated to C# as it would be applicable in almost all languages. — leppie, Oct 21 '10 at 09:39
@leppie The answer may *coincidentally* apply to other languages. But other languages are free to do whatever they want. — Ian Boyd, Mar 05 '22 at 17:01
Dont use any of the two above. Simply use Environment.NewLine — VivekDev, Jul 31 '23 at 04:47

score 75 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 10 '14 at 01:09

75

\n is Unix, \r is Mac, \r\n is Windows.

Sometimes it's giving trouble especially when running code cross platform. You can bypass this by using Environment.NewLine.

Please refer to What is the difference between \r, \n and \r\n ?! for more information. Happy reading

edited Apr 10 '14 at 01:09

Kevin Panko

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answered Oct 21 '10 at 09:42

Peter van Kekem

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Because nowadays Windows is not as strict in this as it use to be, so it accepts \n as well. – Peter van Kekem Mar 24 '17 at 09:06
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@TobySmith I know this post is old, but you can try writing a file with "\n" as linebreak and open it with the standard Windows Editor. He will not do a linebreak unless you did "\r\n" – Rüdiger Aug 16 '17 at 13:14
In Windows 10, support for all types of line endings is added in Notepad! https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2018/05/08/extended-eol-in-notepad/ – Peter van Kekem Mar 08 '19 at 11:05

score 42 · Answer 2 · edited Apr 10 '14 at 01:10

42

The Difference

There are a few characters which can indicate a new line. The usual ones are these two:

* '\n' or '0x0A' (10 in decimal) -> This character is called "Line Feed" (LF).
* '\r' or '0x0D' (13 in decimal) -> This one is called "Carriage return" (CR).

Different Operating Systems handle newlines in a different way. Here is a short list of the most common ones:

* DOS and Windows

They expect a newline to be the combination of two characters, namely '\r\n' (or 13 followed by 10).

* Unix (and hence Linux as well)

Unix uses a single '\n' to indicate a new line.

* Mac

Macs use a single '\r'.

Taken from Here

edited Apr 10 '14 at 01:10

Kevin Panko

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answered Oct 21 '10 at 09:41

Dave

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AFAIK, Macs haven't used `\r` since OSX -- they use `\n` now. And `\r\n` happens to be used by just about every app-layer internet protocol in existence that ever works in terms of lines. – cHao Dec 28 '11 at 16:15

score 12 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 21 '10 at 09:40

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"\n" is just a line feed (Unicode U+000A). This is typically the Unix line separator.

"\r\n" is a carriage return (Unicode U+000D) followed by a line feed (Unicode U+000A). This is typically the Windows line separator.

answered Oct 21 '10 at 09:40

Jon Skeet

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Jon but if it's only line feed , so why the text in the pic looks like it also has carrige return http://i.stack.imgur.com/LKVCr.png ? if it was only a line feed so the _bbb..._ should not be at most left of the second line... – Royi Namir May 05 '13 at 08:24
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@RoyiNamir: It all depends on the display medium. So it looks like the Windows console shell treats `\n` as a complete line break now, but it may not in all versions - and if you view that same data as a file in notepad, you *won't* see a line break. – Jon Skeet May 05 '13 at 08:45

score 4 · Answer 4 · edited Mar 18 '19 at 14:43

\n = LF (Line Feed) // Used as a new line character on Unix

\r = CR (Carriage Return) // Used as a new line character on Mac

\r\n = CR + LF // Used as a new line character on Windows

(char)13 = \r = CR

Environment.NewLine = any of the above code based on the operating system

// .NET provides the Environment class which provides many data based on operating systems, so if the application is built on Windows, and you use CR + LF ("\n\r" instead of Environment.NewLine) as the new line character in your strings, and then Microsoft creates a VM for running .NET applications in Unix, then there will be problem. So, you should always use Environment.NewLine when you want a new line character. Now you need not to care about the operating system.

score 2 · Answer 5 · answered Oct 21 '10 at 09:41

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Basically comes down to Windows standard: \r\n and Unix based systems using: \n

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newline

answered Oct 21 '10 at 09:41

James Hulse

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score 0 · Answer 6 · edited Mar 18 '19 at 14:39

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It's about how the operating system recognizes line ends.

Windows user \r\n
Mac user \r
Linux uses \n

Morale: if you are developing for Windows, stick to \r\n. Or even better, use C# string functions to deal with strings which already consider line endings (WriteLine, and such).

edited Mar 18 '19 at 14:39

Peter Mortensen

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answered Oct 21 '10 at 09:41

Palantir

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score 0 · Answer 7 · answered Oct 21 '10 at 09:42

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\n is the line break used by Unix(-like) systems, \r\n is used by windows. This has nothing to do with C#.

answered Oct 21 '10 at 09:42

Adrian Grigore

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score 0 · Answer 8 · answered Oct 21 '10 at 09:43

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They are just \r\n and \n are variants.

\r\n is used in windows

\n is used in mac and linux

answered Oct 21 '10 at 09:43

Thalaivar

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score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Mar 05 '22 at 17:15

\r inserts U+000DCARRIAGE RETURN
\n inserts U+000ALINE FEED

You can insert one, or the other, or both:

\r\n inserts U+000DU+000A
\n\r inserts U+000AU+000D

If you intention is to indicate "the end of the line", different platforms, and different technologies, expect you to insert different things:

Windows: U+000DU+000A (i.e. \r\n)
HTTP: U+000DU+000A (i.e. \r\n)
HTML: U+000A (i.e. \n)
Unix: U+000A (i.e. \n)
Macintosh: U+000D (i.e. \r)
zOS: U+0085 (i.e. \x85)

In C#, what's the difference between \n and \r\n?

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