Normally I work with C# but recently I have had to do some VB.NET development. Today I came upon the issue of a new line character in a string. C# this is no issue:

string.Format("Line 1: {0}\nLine 2: {1}", str1, str2);

VB.NET this becomes a little awkward. VB.NET you have many options for a new line character:

VB Constants: vbNewLine, vbCrLf
Character Function: Chr(13)
VB Control Chars: ControlChars.NewLine, ControlChars.CrLf
Environment Variable: Environment.NewLine

Using the Environment Variable would be the recommended practice as it should return an Environment specific string. However, in practice it would come down to constants versus variables. As I saw suggested on various forums was replace the \n in your string for one of the options above. This would result in either:

String.Format("Line 1: {0}" + Environment.NewLine + "Line 2: {1}", str1, str2)  

String.Format("Line 1: {0}{1}Line 2: {2}", str1, Environment.NewLine, str2)

Neither of these options satisfied me. Since I wanted to use it in a resource file, that ruled out the first way, and the second is clumsy and error prone. There is a very simple solution to this issue though. In the resource editor, while editing the string press Shift+Enter to insert a New Line.

If you don’t have a resource file setup in your project, make sure you have Refactor! for VB.NET installed. This is free as I mentioned in my last post. Place your cursor on the string and press the Refactor! Shortcut Key Ctrl+~. Select Extract String to Resource. This will move the string literal to the resource file and replace it in the code with a call to the resource. Name the resource string appropriately, and adjust your string in the resource editor. You can now use Shift+Enter to add a new line in your string, while also using a better programming practice with resource files.