Best way to split string into lines

Question

How do you split multi-line string into lines?

I know this way

var result = input.Split(\"\\n\\r\".ToCharArray(), StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntri         


        

Answer 1

    private string[] GetLines(string text)
    {

        List<string> lines = new List<string>();
        using (MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream())
        {
            StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter(ms);
            sw.Write(text);
            sw.Flush();

            ms.Position = 0;

            string line;

            using (StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(ms))
            {
                while ((line = sr.ReadLine()) != null)
                {
                    lines.Add(line);
                }
            }
            sw.Close();
        }



        return lines.ToArray();
    }

Answer 2

• If it looks ugly, just remove the unnecessary ToCharArray call.

• If you want to split by either \n or \r, you've got two options:

  • Use an array literal – but this will give you empty lines for Windows-style line endings \r\n:

    var result = text.Split(new [] { '\r', '\n' });
    

  • Use a regular expression, as indicated by Bart:

    var result = Regex.Split(text, "\r\n|\r|\n");
    

• If you want to preserve empty lines, why do you explicitly tell C# to throw them away? (StringSplitOptions parameter) – use StringSplitOptions.None instead.

Answer 3

You could use Regex.Split:

string[] tokens = Regex.Split(input, @"\r?\n|\r");

Edit: added |\r to account for (older) Mac line terminators.

Answer 4

string[] lines = input.Split(new[] { '\r', '\n' }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries);