multiline formatting for verbatim strings in c# (prefix with @)

Question

I love using the @"strings" in c#, especially when I have a lot of multi-line text. The only annoyance is that my code formatting goes to doodie when doing this, because the second and greater lines are pushed fully to the left instead of using the indentation of my beautifully formatted code. I know this is by design, but is there some option/hack way of allowing these lines to be indented, without adding the actual tabs/spaces to the output?

adding example:

        var MyString = @" this is 
a multi-line string
in c#.";

My variable declaration is indented to the "correct" depth, but the second and further lines in the string get pushed to the left margin- so the code is kinda ugly. You could add tabs to the start of line 2 and 3, but the string itself would then contain those tabs... make sense?

Answer 1

How about a string extension? Update: I reread your question and I hope there is a better answer. This is something that bugs me too and having to solve it as below is frustrating but on the plus side it does work.

using System.Text.RegularExpressions;

namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
    public static class StringExtensions
    {
        public static string StripLeadingWhitespace(this string s)
        {
            Regex r = new Regex(@"^\s+", RegexOptions.Multiline);
            return r.Replace(s, string.Empty);
        }
    }
}

And an example console program:

using System;

namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            string x = @"This is a test
                of the emergency
                broadcasting system.";

            Console.WriteLine(x);

            Console.WriteLine();
            Console.WriteLine("---");
            Console.WriteLine();

            Console.WriteLine(x.StripLeadingWhitespace());

            Console.ReadKey();
        }
    }
}

And the output:

This is a test
                of the emergency
                broadcasting system.

---

This is a test
of the emergency
broadcasting system.

And a cleaner way to use it if you decide to go this route:

string x = @"This is a test
    of the emergency
    broadcasting system.".StripLeadingWhitespace();
// consider renaming extension to say TrimIndent() or similar if used this way

Answer 2

Cymen has given the right solution. I use a similar approach as derived from Scala's stripMargin() method. Here's what my extension method looks like:

public static string StripMargin(this string s)
{
    return Regex.Replace(s, @"[ \t]+\|", string.Empty);
}

Usage:

var mystring = @"
        |SELECT 
        |    *
        |FROM
        |    SomeTable
        |WHERE
        |    SomeColumn IS NOT NULL"
    .StripMargin();

Result:

SELECT 
    *
FROM
    SomeTable
WHERE
    SomeColumn IS NOT NULL

Answer 3

with C# 11 you can now use raw string literals.

var MyString = """
    this is 
    a multi-line string
    in c#.
    """;

The output is:

this is
a multi-line string
in c#.

It also combines with string interpolation:

var variable = 24.3;
var myString = $"""
    this is 
    a multi-line string
    in c# with a {variable}.
    """;

Answer 4

I can't think of an answer that would completely satisfy your question, however you could write a function that strips leading spaces from lines of text contained in a string and call it on each creation of such a string.

var myString = TrimLeadingSpacesOfLines(@" this is a 
    a multi-line string
    in c#.");

Yes it is a hack, but you specified your acceptance of a hack in your question.

Answer 5

Here is a longish solution which tries to mimic textwrap.dedent as much as possible. The first line is left as-is and expected not to be indented. (You can generate the unit tests based on the doctests using doctest-csharp.)

/// <summary>
/// Imitates the Python's
/// <a href="https://docs.python.org/3/library/textwrap.html#textwrap.dedent">
/// <c>textwrap.dedent</c></a>.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="text">Text to be dedented</param>
/// <returns>array of dedented lines</returns>
/// <code doctest="true">
/// Assert.That(Dedent(""), Is.EquivalentTo(new[] {""}));
/// Assert.That(Dedent("test me"), Is.EquivalentTo(new[] {"test me"}));
/// Assert.That(Dedent("test\nme"), Is.EquivalentTo(new[] {"test", "me"}));
/// Assert.That(Dedent("test\n  me"), Is.EquivalentTo(new[] {"test", "  me"}));
/// Assert.That(Dedent("test\n  me\n    again"), Is.EquivalentTo(new[] {"test", "me", "  again"}));
/// Assert.That(Dedent("  test\n  me\n    again"), Is.EquivalentTo(new[] {"  test", "me", "  again"}));
/// </code>
private static string[] Dedent(string text)
{
    var lines = text.Split(
        new[] {"\r\n", "\r", "\n"},
        StringSplitOptions.None);

    // Search for the first non-empty line starting from the second line.
    // The first line is not expected to be indented.
    var firstNonemptyLine = -1;
    for (var i = 1; i < lines.Length; i++)
    {
        if (lines[i].Length == 0) continue;

        firstNonemptyLine = i;
        break;
    }

    if (firstNonemptyLine < 0) return lines;

    // Search for the second non-empty line.
    // If there is no second non-empty line, we can return immediately as we
    // can not pin the indent.
    var secondNonemptyLine = -1;
    for (var i = firstNonemptyLine + 1; i < lines.Length; i++)
    {
        if (lines[i].Length == 0) continue;

        secondNonemptyLine = i;
        break;
    }

    if (secondNonemptyLine < 0) return lines;

    // Match the common prefix with at least two non-empty lines
    
    var firstNonemptyLineLength = lines[firstNonemptyLine].Length;
    var prefixLength = 0;
    
    for (int column = 0; column < firstNonemptyLineLength; column++)
    {
        char c = lines[firstNonemptyLine][column];
        if (c != ' ' && c != '\t') break;
        
        bool matched = true;
        for (int lineIdx = firstNonemptyLine + 1; lineIdx < lines.Length; 
                lineIdx++)
        {
            if (lines[lineIdx].Length == 0) continue;
            
            if (lines[lineIdx].Length < column + 1)
            {
                matched = false;
                break;
            }

            if (lines[lineIdx][column] != c)
            {
                matched = false;
                break;
            }
        }

        if (!matched) break;
        
        prefixLength++;
    }

    if (prefixLength == 0) return lines;
    
    for (var i = 1; i < lines.Length; i++)
    {
        if (lines[i].Length > 0) lines[i] = lines[i].Substring(prefixLength);
    }

    return lines;
}