JavaScript Multiline String [duplicate]

Question

This question already has answers here:

How can I assign a multiline string literal to a variable? (41 answers)

Closed 7 years ago.

The question is:

What is the JavaScript method to store a multiline string into a variable like you can in PHP?

• Unicron: What do you mean by "grab"? From where?
• AgelessEssence: check my answer on stackoverflow.com/a/19970452/209797

Answer 1

If by 'multiline string' you mean a string containing linebreaks, those can be written by escaping them using \n (for newline):

var multilineString = 'Line 1\nLine 2';
alert(multilineString);
// Line 1
// Line 2

If you mean, how can a string be written across multiple lines of code, then you can continue the string by putting a \ backslash at the end of the line:

var multilineString = 'Line \
1\nLine 2';
alert(multilineString);
// Line 1
// Line 2

Answer 2

var es6string = `<div>
 This is a string.
</div>`;
console.log(es6string);

• Mike Cluck: Note: This only works with ES6 and, at the time of this writing, is not well supported in IE11 or Safari.
• John: This is becoming the correct answer.
• Joshua Cook: Ugh why does JS need to reinvent the wheel. This should be a subprocess.

Answer 3

Based on previous answers and different use cases, here is a small example:

https://gist.github.com/lavoiesl/5880516 Don't forget to use /*! to avoid the comment being removed in minification

function extractFuncCommentString(func) {
 var matches = func.toString().match(/function\s*\(\)\s*\{\s*\/\*\!?\s*([\s\S]+?)\s*\*\/\s*\}/);
 if (!matches) return false;
 return matches[1];
}
var myString = extractFuncCommentString(function(){/*!
 <p>
 foo bar
 </p>
*/});

• Oleg: I've never seen this before, I don't know how practical this would be, but this is helluva creative way to handle multiline strings! +1

Answer 4

Only (?) way to have multiline strings in Javascript:

var multiline_string = 'line 1\
line 2\
line 3';

Answer 5

var myString = [
 'One line',
 'Another line'
].join('\n');

Answer 6

This works:

var htmlString = "<div>This is a string.</div>";

This fails:

var htmlSTring = "<div>
 This is a string.
</div>";

Sometimes this is desirable for readability.

Add backslashes to get it to work:

var htmlSTring = "<div>\
 This is a string.\
</div>";

or this way

var htmlSTring = 'This is\n' +
'a multiline\n' + 
'string';