Line breaks not counted as 2 characters towards the length of a string

Question

I am wondering why \n is not counted as 2 characters when determining the length of a string in C#

EX: This is a test comment\nSample text test 123456\nadssssssssss\n\nasdasdasda\nasdadadadad\nasadad\nasada\n\n\nLast paragraph\n12345\nTest

The above string contains 136 characters, but the Length property of the String object I store the string in counts \n as 1 chartacter, and reports the string as 124 characters long.

I want to extract a substring based on pre calculated start and lenght markers. The markers were created counting \n as two characters. How could I do the equivilent of the following in C#

select SUBSTRING('This is a test comment\nSample text test 123456\nadssssssssss\n\nasdasdasda\nasdadadadad\nasadad\nasada\n\n\nLast paragraph\n12345\nTest',1,136);

I can't use substring since my lenght offset of 136 is outside the boundaries of the c# representation of the string.

Answer 1

String.Length does include newlines:

string test = "1234\n6789\n\nC";

Console.WriteLine(test);
Console.WriteLine("Length: {0}", test.Length);

Output:

1234
6789

C    
Length: 12

What you may be missing is that '\n' is one character. It represents the newline character (LF). The backslash in a string literal indicates it is an Escape Sequence.

So even though you count 136 characters, the \n is replaced with a single newline character when it is compiled.

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Note, depending on where this string is being used, you may want to consider using Environment.NewLine instead of \n. The true newline on Windows is "\r\n", or CR LF. While many controls, etc. will handle the \n fine, files and other things may expect \r\n.

string test = "Welcome to" + Environment.NewLine + "StackOverflow!";