How can I write a newline in a string in ColdFusion?

Question

Currently I\'m putting newlines in strings through one of these two methods:

Answer 1

I was wondering if something like this would work:

<cfset str = CreateObject("java", "java.lang.String").init("Line 1\nLine 2\nLine 3")>

<cfoutput>
<pre>#str#</pre>
</cfoutput>

Alas no :O(

Answer 2

I was looking for a way to output a new line in <cfscript>, so I figured I'd leave my answer for anyone else who arrived in a similar fashion:

writeDump(variable); // writeDump will not produce a new line.
writeOutput("<br>"); // you have to use writeOutput.

writeOutput appends to the page-output stream as html, so you need to write html for it to output (this means you can also include   to add spaces for indentation).

Answer 3

Not directly in CF, I'll leave it to the CF-Java dudes to say whether you can use a Java method directly on a CF var to achieve what you want, but...

You could use cfsavecontent to put natural line breaks in:

<cfsavecontent variable="someStr">
This is line 1
This is line 2
This is line 3
</cfsavecontent>

Then check it with:

<cfoutput>
<pre>#Trim(someStr)#</pre>
</cfoutput>

Note that the Trim() is there to get rid of the first and last line breaks if you don't want them.

Answer 4

If you are into platform-independent development, you can do:

<cfset NL = CreateObject("java", "java.lang.System").getProperty("line.separator")>

For example, in your application.cfm/cfc or somewhere else high-level and use that.

Answer 5

CF8 formatted cfmail with line feeds and without adding anything. Seems like Adobe would provide something SPECIFIC about "why" and a simple work-around. ... Jurisdictionary

Answer 6

Your way is correct. There is no support for \n or \r in CF. From the Live Docs

• Chr(10) returns a linefeed character
• Chr(13) returns a carriage return character
• The two-character string Chr(13) & Chr(10) returns a Windows newline