something like a python's triple-quote in F# (or C#)?

Question

I want to assign a xml code into a string variable. I can do this without escaping single or double-quotes by using triple-quote in python. Is there a similar way to do this in F# or C#?

Answer 1

F# 3.0 supports triple quoted strings. See Visual Studio F# Team Blog Post on 3.0 features.

The F# 3.0 Spec Strings and Characters section specifically mentions the XML scenario:

A triple-quoted string is specified by using three quotation marks (""") to ensure that a string that includes one or more escaped strings is interpreted verbatim. For example, a triple-quoted string can be used to embed XML blobs:

Answer 2

As far as I know, there is no syntax corresponding to this in C# / F#. If you use @"str" then you have to replace quote with two quotes and if you just use "str" then you need to add backslash.

In any case, there is some encoding of ":

var str = @"allows
  multiline, but still need to encode "" as two chars";
var str = "need to use backslahs \" here";

However, the best thing to do when you need to embed large strings (such as XML data) into your application is probably to use .NET resources (or store the data somewhere else, depending on your application). Embedding large string literals in program is generally not very recommended. Also, there used to be a plugin for pasting XML as a tree that constructs XElement objects for C#, but I'm not sure whether it still exists.

Although, I would personally vote to add """ as known from Python to F# - it is very useful, especially for interactive scripting.