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I'm working on a project which deals with strings a lot. I need to show what kind of delimiter is used in strings. I get that value from an API call. How do I print the delimiter to the console?

delimiter = '\n';

I want to print this on screen.

console.log(delimiter);
// prints "
          "

I need it to print \n instead of literally printing newline.

2
  • 1
    delimiter = '\\n';, perhaps? Commented Oct 8, 2021 at 10:47
  • It is set from API call,Which I have no access to. Commented Oct 8, 2021 at 10:57

3 Answers 3

5

The character \n is an escape sequence used for new lines.

That is why you need to use replace on the string if you want to see it in the console. Like so:

console.log(delimiter.replace('\n', '\\n'));

The extra backslash escapes the \n so it is not longer treated as a newline.

More about escape sequences can be found here:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/String#escape_sequences

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2 Comments

Code only answers are consider poor quality, please explain WHY you need the additional back slash.
See update.....
2

To display a (multi)line with already wrapped text, use this 🙂

There is a little regex thing, which removes \r and \n

const server = 'a\na';

const client = server.replace(/\r?\n/gm, '\\n');

console.log(1, server);
console.log(2, client);

Comments

1

Using JSON.stringify() you can transform an actual new line character (whatever it might be) into its stringified version. Then after stripping leading and trailing double quotes, you'll get what you're after:

console.log(JSON.stringify(delimiter).replaceAll('"',''));

Update:

How to handle double quotes and control characters inside strings that are delimited with newlines?

This should do the trick:

const delimiter = '\n';
const delimitedText = 'a\nb\nc\nd';
const stringifiedDelimiter = JSON.stringify(delimiter).replaceAll('"','');
console.log(delimitedText.replaceAll(delimiter, stringifiedDelimiter));

2 Comments

How to handle double quotes inside strings that contain double quote marks and/or control characters other than newlines?
Please see an update.

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