Write Multiline Strings in Go

Create Multiline strings in Go

Let us look at different ways to write multiline strings in Golang while declaring and assigning string values to variables.

Raw String Literals

Raw string literals are the character sequences that are enclosed within backticks. The raw string literal supports multiline string, but escaped characters are not interpreted.

Let us take a simple example to demonstrate.

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {

    var text string = `This is an 
    example of 
    multiline string
    in Go programming`

    // Prints the multiline string
    fmt.Println(text)

    var description string = `Welcome to \n
    Golang Tutorial`

    // Note the escape character \n in the multiline string is printed as-is
    fmt.Println(description)
}

Output

This is an 
    example of 
    multiline string
    in Go programming

Welcome to \n
    Golang Tutorial

Notice that the \n is not interpreted and it will be printed as-is.

Concatenation of Strings

The other alternative way is to concatenate multiple strings using a + operator to achieve multiline string.

Here the multiple strings are enclosed within the normal quotes "" and concatenated using a + operator. Unlike the backticks, this will preserve all the escape characters in the string.

Let us take an example to demonstrate the same.

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {

    var text string = "This is an \n" +
        "example of \t" +
        "multiline string " +
        "in Go programming"

    // Prints the multiline string
    fmt.Println(text)

}

Output

This is an 
example of  multiline string in Go programming

Note: The + operator should be at the leading side of the string; else it will throw an error.

Wrong Usage

var text = "line 1"
    +"line 2"

Correct Usage

var text = "line 1"+
    "line 2"

Conclusion

Multiline string is a long string that are split into multiple lines. In Golang, there are two ways to create multiline strings.

• Using Raw string literals (string enclosed in backticks)
• String Concatenation