Heredoc strings in C#

Question

Is there a heredoc notation for strings in C#, preferably one where I don\'t have to escape anything (including double quotes, which are a quirk in verbatim strings

Answer 1

As others have said, there isn't.

Personally I would avoid creating them in the first place though - I would use an embedded resource instead. They're pretty easy to work with, and if you have a utility method to load a named embedded resource from the calling assembly as a string (probably assuming UTF-8 encoding) it means that:

• If your embedded document is something like SQL, XSLT, HTML etc you'll get syntax highlighting because it really will be a SQL (etc) file
• You don't need to worry about any escaping
• You don't need to worry about either indenting your document or making your C# code look ugly
• You can use the file in a "normal" way if that's relevant (e.g. view it as an HTML page)
• Your data is separated from your code

Answer 2

No, there is no "HEREDOC" style string literal in C#.

C# has only two types of string literals:

• Regular literal, with many escape sequences necessary
• Verbatim literal, @-quoted: doublequotes need to be escaped by doubling

References

• csharpindepth.com - General Articles - Strings
• MSDN - C# Programmer's Reference - Strings

  String literals are of type string and can be written in two forms, quoted and @-quoted.

Answer 3

Well even though it doesn't support HEREDOC's, you can still do stuff like the following using Verbatim strings:

string miniTemplate = @"

  Hello ""{0}"",

  Your friend {1} sent you this message:

     {2}

  That's all!";

string populatedTemplate = String.Format(miniTemplate, "Fred", "Jack", "HelloWorld!");

System.Console.WriteLine(populatedTemplate);

Snagged from: http://blog.luckyus.net/2009/02/03/heredoc-in-c-sharp/