- 1 year ago
Technical difference between "line break" and "newline"?
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The terms "line break" and "newline" are often used interchangeably, but they have slightly different meanings in different contexts. Here's a technical explanation of the difference between the two:
Line Break:
- Line break refers to the point where a line of text ends and a new line begins. It represents the visual separation of text into individual lines.
- In the context of text editors and word processors, a line break typically inserts a visual line break without starting a new paragraph or affecting the text formatting.
- In terms of ASCII and Unicode character encoding, the line break is represented by the newline character (
'\n'
or0x0A
in ASCII/Unicode) or a combination of carriage return and line feed ('\r\n'
or0x0D0A
in ASCII/Unicode).
Newline:
- Newline is a special character or sequence of characters used to indicate the end of a line of text and the start of a new line.
- In computer systems, a newline character is represented by various escape sequences or special characters depending on the platform and programming language. For example:
- In C-like languages, including C, C++, Java, and JavaScript, a newline is represented by the escape sequence
'\n'
. - In Python, a newline is represented by the escape sequence
'\n'
. - In Windows systems, a newline is typically represented by the combination of carriage return and line feed (
'\r\n'
). - In Unix-like systems (e.g., Linux, macOS), a newline is represented by the single character
'\n'
.
- In C-like languages, including C, C++, Java, and JavaScript, a newline is represented by the escape sequence
- Newlines are used to separate lines of text in plain text files, source code, configuration files, and other textual data.
In summary, "line break" refers to the visual separation of lines in text, while "newline" is the character or sequence of characters used to indicate the end of a line and the start of a new line in computer systems. The specific representation of a newline depends on the platform and programming language being used.