Storing a Javascript variable that contains new line characters

[ryan_b83]

Hello, I am having syntax errors in JavaScript. Its pretty basic and hoping someone has a quick solution. I am by no means a JavaScript guru...lol

Basically I am pulling a large string from a database for example:

"This is my string I am getting from the database

It also contains new line characters"

So when I assign this string to a JavaScript variable I get a syntax error because the JavaScript variables do not allow for new line characters.

Any Ideas?

Thanks,
Ryan

[gergoe]

Javascript is strict in this manner, a string must consist only one line in the source code. To get around this, you only need to replace newline characters before sending them to the browser in your string to \n (escaped newline character). For example the alert("Hello\nWorld!"); would print "Hello" and "World!" in a new line.

See the list of (other) escape sequences [javascriptkit.com].

[Dabrowski]

Ryan, what language are you using to get the data from the database and write the JS?

If you are in Perl you can easily fix this with a couple of regex's...

## To remove UNIX/MAC newline charaters... 
s/\r//g; 
## To change linebreaks into actual linebreak escapes... 
s/\n/\\n/g;

You could also use this for other escape characters.