Difference between “\n” and Environment.NewLine

Question

What is the difference between two, if any (with respect to .Net)?

Answer 1

Depends on the platform. On Windows it is actually "\r\n".

From MSDN:

A string containing "\r\n" for non-Unix platforms, or a string containing "\n" for Unix platforms.

Answer 2

Environment.NewLine will return the newline character for the corresponding platform in which your code is running

you will find this very useful when you deploy your code in linux on the Mono framework

Answer 3

From the docs ...

A string containing "\r\n" for non-Unix platforms, or a string containing "\n" for Unix platforms.

Answer 4

Environment.NewLine will give "\r\n" when run on Windows. If you are generating strings for Unix based environments, you don't want the "\r".

Answer 5

Exact implementation of Environment.NewLine from the source code:

The implementation in .NET 4.6.1:

/*===================================NewLine====================================
**Action: A property which returns the appropriate newline string for the given
**        platform.
**Returns: \r\n on Win32.
**Arguments: None.
**Exceptions: None.
==============================================================================*/
public static String NewLine {
    get {
        Contract.Ensures(Contract.Result<String>() != null);
        return "\r\n";
    }
}

source

---

The implementation in .NET Core:

/*===================================NewLine====================================
**Action: A property which returns the appropriate newline string for the
**        given platform.
**Returns: \r\n on Win32.
**Arguments: None.
**Exceptions: None.
==============================================================================*/
public static String NewLine {
    get {
        Contract.Ensures(Contract.Result() != null);
#if !PLATFORM_UNIX
        return "\r\n";
#else
        return "\n";
#endif // !PLATFORM_UNIX
    }
}

source (in System.Private.CoreLib)

public static string NewLine => "\r\n";

source (in System.Runtime.Extensions)

Answer 6

You might get into trouble when you try to display multi-line message separated with "\r\n".

It is always a good practice to do things in a standard way, and use Environment.NewLine