61

Does anyone know how to put newline in the label of the node? \n is not working - instead some new nodes appear.

Tarnay Kálmán
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M T
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5 Answers5

72

This works for me as documented:

digraph {
    n[label="two\nlines"]
    "on\nthree\nlines"
}

Either put in in a label attribute (my preference), or use it as the node's name, but always enclose it with double quotes.

marapet
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  • It appears that `'n` is to explicitly center the lines. While this is default behavior (on mine at least), if you were to specify this globally (I assume there is such an option) then `'n` would override that setting while `\n` would not (presumably). – altendky Dec 05 '12 at 20:08
  • @altendky Which version is needed in order to get `'n` to work? With 2.29.20120504.0446, this still doesn't work. Only `\n` works (or `\r` to right align, and `\l` to left align). Furthermore, this only works for the first two lines. All the subsequent lines are centered, whatever escape sequence is used. – marapet Dec 05 '12 at 21:44
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    My previous comment was based only on the link. I just tried it and `'r` does not seem to work, only `\r`. Also, `\r` applies right justify the line _before_ it (ditto for left). I have 2.29.20121205.0545 but I have no idea when this was implemented or to what degree. My test node is: `multilineNode [label="line 1 asdf\nline 2 asfdasdfd\nline 3 fd\rline 4 fdasfasddddddd\nline 5 fdsf\l d \N\r"]` Note `\N` to get the node name in there too. – altendky Dec 06 '12 at 15:46
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    In case anyone wants to combine fonts, with a newline, html labels, specifically `
    ` can be used eg `label=<Word1
    Word2>`     – user2957945 Sep 28 '17 at 18:56
  • This answer is horrifically unclear. All it is saying is to use `\n`... – Andrew Feb 16 '21 at 18:53
10

Try "\\n" that works: dot.node('test', label="line1\\nline2").

Dmitriy
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6

You can use \n character

With graphviz package, this would give

from graphviz import Digraph
d=Digraph()
d.node('test',label='line 1\\nline 2')
print(d.source)

This would give

digraph {
    test [label="line 1\nline 2"]
}
Guillaume Jacquenot
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5

<BR/> tag in a HTML-like label creates a line break.

digraph {
    n[label=<two<BR/>lines>]
}

This can come handy when the \n syntax cannot be used. Most notably, the graphviz package for LaTeX can have problems parsing \ inside .tex files, and using the HTML-like syntax is a workaround.

Jan Pokorný
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2

This issue was also important to me, as I was using graphviz to generate detailed UML diagrams and needed to use escape characters in the labels. However, using the Python package, I encountered a bug in how escape characters are handled, so some of the recommended solutions did not work.

For example:

from graphviz import Digraph
d=Digraph()
d.node('test',label='line 1\\nline 2')
print(d.source)

Generated the following (note that escaping does not work):

digraph {
    test [label="line 1\\nline 2"]
}

Workarounds such as using a single backslash, rawstrings, are infuriatingly ineffective. However, the workaround that did ultimately work was the following:

    s = graphviz.Source(d.source.replace('\\\\', '\\'))
    s.render('my_uml')

I don't know if this bug in handling escape characters is in the Python bindings (v0.12) or graphviz itself (v2.44), but since others may encounter it, I wanted to offer this solution.

bbartley
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