How to remove new line characters from a string?

Question

I have a string in the following format

string s = "This is a Test String.\n   This is a next line.\t This is a tab.\n'

I want to remove all the occurrences of \n and \r from the string above.

I have tried string s = s.Trim(new char[] {'\n', '\r'}); but it didn't help.

score 406 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 10 '10 at 02:50

406

I like to use regular expressions. In this case you could do:

string replacement = Regex.Replace(s, @"\t|\n|\r", "");

Regular expressions aren't as popular in the .NET world as they are in the dynamic languages, but they provide a lot of power to manipulate strings.

answered Nov 10 '10 at 02:50

Kirk

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This was definitely the best solution for me. A smooth blend of this C# and javascript was all I needed to resolve my issue. – Joe Brunscheon Nov 26 '13 at 19:30
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I had a similar problem where I needed also to remove newlines from my string. I tried to do it with string.Replace, didn't work. When I used Regex.Replace with the exact same regular expression string as the parameter, it worked. Thanks. – instanceof Jan 26 '16 at 08:57
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Be careful if using this in a loop that processes 1M+ items. Regex is way slower than just String.Replace – Nick Jun 23 '16 at 16:02
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The code example also removes tabs \t, which is not in question. – Michael Freidgeim Aug 20 '19 at 02:19

jason · Answer 2 · 2010-11-10T02:39:55.453

You want to use String.Replace to remove a character.

s = s.Replace("\n", String.Empty);
s = s.Replace("\r", String.Empty);
s = s.Replace("\t", String.Empty);

Note that String.Trim(params char[] trimChars) only removes leading and trailing characters in trimChars from the instance invoked on.

You could make an extension method, which avoids the performance problems of the above of making lots of temporary strings:

static string RemoveChars(this string s, params char[] removeChars) {
    Contract.Requires<ArgumentNullException>(s != null);
    Contract.Requires<ArgumentNullException>(removeChars != null);
    var sb = new StringBuilder(s.Length);
    foreach(char c in s) { 
        if(!removeChars.Contains(c)) {
            sb.Append(c);
        }
    }
    return sb.ToString();
}

Note that this approach will create two intermediate string objects. Depending on the size of your string, this could have significant performance and memory consumption consequences. — cdhowie, Nov 10 '10 at 02:37

score 49 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 23 '14 at 15:10

49

I know this is an old post, however I thought I'd share the method I use to remove new line characters.

s.Replace(Environment.NewLine, "");

References:

MSDN String.Replace Method and MSDN Environment.NewLine Property

answered Apr 23 '14 at 15:10

ᴍᴀᴛᴛ ʙᴀᴋᴇʀ

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nice for Mono support – Nick Jun 23 '16 at 15:57
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In cross-environment (i.e. Windows app that is feed with data from Unix system) application this will cause more problems than profits. – Jakub Szułakiewicz Jun 17 '19 at 10:31

score 18 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 10 '10 at 02:36

18

If speed and low memory usage are important, do something like this:

var sb = new StringBuilder(s.Length);

foreach (char i in s)
    if (i != '\n' && i != '\r' && i != '\t')
        sb.Append(i);

s = sb.ToString();

answered Nov 10 '10 at 02:36

cdhowie

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Yes, i'd go with this too (in an extension method). Always good to use StringBuilder. +1 – RPM1984 Nov 10 '10 at 02:39
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"Always good to use the StringBuilder" < I'm no pro, but that's not strictly true. This [article by Jeff Atwood](http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-sad-tragedy-of-micro-optimization-theater/) provides a fun insight into string manipulation/concatenation and ultimately, optimisation. – Phil Cooper Jul 01 '14 at 09:29

score 5 · Answer 5 · edited Sep 11 '15 at 12:21

5

just do that

s = s.Replace("\n", String.Empty).Replace("\t", String.Empty).Replace("\r", String.Empty);

edited Sep 11 '15 at 12:21

LeftyX

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answered Dec 07 '13 at 10:09

Mahmoud ElMansy

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score 3 · Answer 6 · answered Feb 23 '16 at 14:14

3

A LINQ approach:

string s = "This is a Test String.\n   This is a next line.\t This is a tab.\n'";

string s1 = String.Join("", s.Where(c => c != '\n' && c != '\r' && c != '\t'));

answered Feb 23 '16 at 14:14

w.b

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This is using the generic overload of `string.Join` that will call `ToString` on each `char` returned by the query. Better to just pass the query results to the `string` constructor. `s1 = new string(s.Where(....).ToArrary());` – juharr Jan 05 '17 at 14:29

score 2 · Answer 7 · answered Jan 14 '17 at 13:53

The right choice really depends on how big the input string is and what the perforce and memory requirement are, but I would use a regular expression like

string result = Regex.Replace(s, @"\r\n?|\n|\t", String.Empty);

Or if we need to apply the same replacement multiple times, it is better to use a compiled version for the Regex like

var regex = new Regex(@"\r\n?|\n|\t", RegexOptions.Compiled); 
string result = regex.Replace(s, String.Empty);

NOTE: different scenarios requite different approaches to achieve the best performance and the minimum memory consumption

score 2 · Answer 8 · answered Jun 05 '23 at 09:12

This can be easily done using ReplaceLineEndings since .NET 6:

This method searches for all newline sequences within the string and canonicalizes them to the newline sequence provided by replacementText. If replacementText is Empty, all newline sequences within the string will be removed.

Note that it supports multiple types of newline sequences:

The list of recognized newline sequences is CR (U+000D), LF (U+000A), CRLF (U+000D U+000A), NEL (U+0085), LS (U+2028), FF (U+000C), and PS (U+2029). This list is given by the Unicode Standard, Sec. 5.8, Recommendation R4 and Table 5-2.

score 0 · Answer 9 · edited Aug 23 '17 at 07:40

0

Well... I would like you to understand more specific areas of space. \t is actually assorted as a horizontal space, not a vertical space. (test out inserting \t in Notepad)

If you use Java, simply use \v. See the reference below.

\h - A horizontal whitespace character:

[\t\xA0\u1680\u180e\u2000-\u200a\u202f\u205f\u3000]

\v - A vertical whitespace character:

[\n\x0B\f\r\x85\u2028\u2029]

But I am aware that you use .NET. So my answer to replacing every vertical space is..

string replacement = Regex.Replace(s, @"[\n\u000B\u000C\r\u0085\u2028\u2029]", "");

edited Aug 23 '17 at 07:40

ᴍᴀᴛᴛ ʙᴀᴋᴇʀ

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answered Jan 15 '17 at 07:38

Kang Andrew

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It looks like an answer to some other question... and also missing actual reference... – Alexei Levenkov Aug 23 '17 at 07:25

score 0 · Answer 10 · answered Aug 05 '20 at 13:46

0

string remove = Regex.Replace(txtsp.Value).ToUpper(), @"\t|\n|\r", "");

answered Aug 05 '20 at 13:46

Code

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Would be great if your answer had more explanation. https://stackoverflow.com/help/how-to-answer – Keval Domadia Aug 06 '20 at 08:25

score -4 · Answer 11 · edited Feb 23 '16 at 13:55

-4

You can use Trim if you want to remove from start and end.

string stringWithoutNewLine = "\n\nHello\n\n".Trim();

edited Feb 23 '16 at 13:55

René Vogt

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answered Feb 23 '16 at 13:09

Ankit Arya

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score -6 · Answer 12 · answered Oct 01 '13 at 19:06

-6

FYI,

Trim() does that already.

The following LINQPad sample:

void Main()
{
    var s = " \rsdsdsdsd\nsadasdasd\r\n ";
    s.Length.Dump();
    s.Trim().Length.Dump();
}

Outputs:

23
18

answered Oct 01 '13 at 19:06

lnaie

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That doesn't remove the \n in the middle. – FlappySocks Sep 26 '15 at 16:23

How to remove new line characters from a string?

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