End-of-line identifier in VB.NET?

Question

What end-of-line identifier should I use (for example, for output to text files)?

There are many choices:

• vbCrLf
• vbNewLine (apparently an alias of vbCrLf)
• ControlChars.CrLf
• ControlChars.NewLine
• Environment.NewLine
• A static member in some C# class in the application (requires mixed-language solution): public static string LINEEND = "\r\n";
• Global.Microsoft.VisualBasic.ChrW(13) & Global.Microsoft.VisualBasic.ChrW(10) (generated by the Visual Studio designer, at least Visual Basic 2005 Express Edition, for a TextBox with property Multiline set to True when Shift + Return is used while editing property Text.)

What is best practice?

Answer 1

I believe it generally makes most sense to use Environment.NewLine as the new-line identifier, for a number of reasons:

• It is an environment-dependent read-only variable. If you happen to be running your program on Linux (for example), then the value will simply be \n.
• vbCrLf is a legacy constant from the VB6 and earlier languages. Also, it's not environment-independent.
• \r\n has the same issue of not being environment-dependent, and also can't be done nicely in VB.NET (you'd have to assign a variable to Chr(13) & Chr(10)).
• Controls exists in the Microsoft.VisualBasic namespace, effectively making it a legacy/backwards-compatibility option, like vbCrLf. Always stay clear of legacy code if possible.

Answer 2

Environment.NewLine simply because it is environment dependent and behaves differently on different platforms.