Unexpected character is displayed in the textbox

Question

I have a very simple .NET program. It's just to write a string to the textbox. There is a strange character appearing at the end of my string.

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This happens only on my 32-bit XP box. The same program works fine on another 64bit Windows 2008 machine.

The program is as simple as this.

    private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        textBox1.Text = "Hello\n\0\0\0\0\0\0";
    }

I know it's odd to add \0 at the end of the string and I can trim them before applying to the textbox. The textbox is set to allow multi-line.

Just out of curiousity, does anybody know where the problem comes from? Both machines got .NET 3.5 SP1 installed. Both of them are set to have the same regional settings. I doubt if it is related to 32-bit or 64-bit.

UPDATE

Thanks to @DBM and @Andrew. The strange character is coming from \n but nothing to do with \0. Now, it sounds like Windows 2008 can understand both \r\n and \n. Can anybody confirm that?

@Alex you got it. \r\n doesn't have any issue on both XP box and 2008. Do you know what's going on? Both of them have .NET 3.5 SP1 — Harvey Kwok, Jun 08 '11 at 01:16
Check out this SO [question](http://stackoverflow.com/q/2581325/174682) — Zamboni, Jun 08 '11 at 01:17

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 08 '11 at 01:15

6

Standard end-of-line sequence in Windows is \r\n. The text box isn't recognising the \n as a new-line without the preceding carriage return (\r).

answered Jun 08 '11 at 01:15

Andrew Cooper

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Got it. I think you are right that I should use \r\n instead. It sounds like Windows 2008 just happens to understand \n but XP doesn't. Can anyone confirm that Windows 2008 support \n? – Harvey Kwok Jun 08 '11 at 01:21

score 5 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 08 '11 at 01:16

5

You should use Environment.NewLine instead of \r\n, in general.

In the way of explanation: Environment.NewLine will contain the proper sequence of escape characters for whatever platform the application is running in. On Windows, it's \r\n, but *nix (if I recall correctly) uses \n only.

answered Jun 08 '11 at 01:16

Daniel Mann

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Thanks, I agree with you that I should use `Environment.NewLine` too. I think my intention for the question was to find out why they behave differently in Windows 2008 and Windows XP rather than making the strange character disappeared. – Harvey Kwok Jun 08 '11 at 01:25

Unexpected character is displayed in the textbox

2 Answers2