Multi line strings with Javascript

Posted May 26th, 2009 in Javascript

This post shows how to do multi line strings with Javascript. Please note that it is likely the method presented here is not part of the Javascript/ECMA standard but it does work (and has been tested by me) in Internet Explorer 6 to 8, Firefox 1 to 3 and the current releases of Opera, Safari and Chrome.

Add \ to the end of each line

It's simple... add a \ to the end of each line with nothing after it and you have a multi-line string:

var s = "abc\
def\
ghi\
jkl";

Now display the above:

window.alert(s);

which shows:

abcdefghijkl

Note that the newlines are not rendered at all, so you need to make sure the appropriate spacing or line breaks (\n) etc are present in the string.

Another approach

Another approach I found is shown below, but as far as I can tell it only works in Firefox 2+ and not at all in IE, Opera, Chrome and Safari.

var s = (<r><![CDATA[abc
def
ghi
jkl]]></r>).toString();

This does render the line breaks so if you used window.alert on the above it would show:

abc
def
ghi
jkl

So don't use the second approach due to lack of browser support :)