How to insert a line break in a SQL Server VARCHAR/NVARCHAR string

I didn't see any similar questions asked on this topic, and I had to research this for something I'm working on right now. Thought I would post the answer for it in case anyone else had the same question.

Solution 1:

char(13) is CR. For DOS-/Windows-style CRLF linebreaks, you want char(13)+char(10), like:

'This is line 1.' + CHAR(13)+CHAR(10) + 'This is line 2.'

Solution 2:

I found the answer here: http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2007/08/22/sql-server-t-sql-script-to-insert-carriage-return-and-new-line-feed-in-code/

You just concatenate the string and insert a CHAR(13) where you want your line break.

Example:

DECLARE @text NVARCHAR(100)
SET @text = 'This is line 1.' + CHAR(13) + 'This is line 2.'
SELECT @text

This prints out the following:

This is line 1.
This is line 2.

Solution 3:

Another way to do this is as such:

INSERT CRLF SELECT 'fox 
jumped'

That is, simply inserting a line break in your query while writing it will add the like break to the database. This works in SQL server Management studio and Query Analyzer. I believe this will also work in C# if you use the @ sign on strings.

string str = @"INSERT CRLF SELECT 'fox 
    jumped'"

Solution 4:

Run this in SSMS, it shows how line breaks in the SQL itself become part of string values that span lines :

PRINT 'Line 1
Line 2
Line 3'
PRINT ''

PRINT 'How long is a blank line feed?'
PRINT LEN('
')
PRINT ''

PRINT 'What are the ASCII values?'
PRINT ASCII(SUBSTRING('
',1,1))
PRINT ASCII(SUBSTRING('
',2,1))

Result :
Line 1
Line 2
Line 3

How long is a blank line feed?
2

What are the ASCII values?
13
10

Or if you'd rather specify your string on one line (almost!) you could employ REPLACE() like this (optionally use CHAR(13)+CHAR(10) as the replacement) :

PRINT REPLACE('Line 1`Line 2`Line 3','`','
')