Please differentiate @CR, @LF and @CRLF

[Mingre]

1. What the acronyms mean. Correct me if I'm wrong, CR - Carriage Return, LF - Line Feed, and CRLF - combination of the two.

2. When do I use which one. I did a simple test but failed to find out the differences among those three.

ConsoleWrite("CR - Four" & @CR)
ConsoleWrite("LF - Four" & @LF)
ConsoleWrite("CRLF - Four" & @CRLF)

ConsoleWrite( "CR " & StringLen(@CR) & @LF)
ConsoleWrite( "LF " & StringLen(@LF) & @LF)
ConsoleWrite( "CRLF " & StringLen(@CRLF) )

And the result was (and perhaps there's no sense posting it here since most, if not all, of you already know the output):

CR - Four
LF - Four
CRLF - Four
CR 1
LF 1
CRLF 2

I don't see any differences at all, save for the last part in which @CRLF amounts to 2 characters!

Again, I apologize should you find this question trivial.

Thanks! (I already checked the Help File but can't make a sense out of it. So please write while thinking you're instructing a non-programmer. Once again, thanks!)

Edited May 23, 2011 by Lilbert

[hannes08]

Hi Lilbert,

the line endings (used) to be different with all the operating systems. UNIX uses @LF to mark a line end, WINDOWS @CRLF (I think MAC and @CR). So if you use Notepad you'll see that some of the line ends are not recognized.

As you use @CRLF it creates two characters and that's by design. You could replace @CRLF with a "@CR & @LF".

So for your question: When you want to work with the files in Windows use @CRLF.

Edited May 23, 2011 by Hannes123

[Mingre]

Hi Lilbert,

the line endings (used) to be different with all the operating systems. UNIX uses @LF to mark a line end, WINDOWS @CRLF (I think MAC and @CR). So if you use Notepad you'll see that some of the line ends are not recognized.

As you use @CRLF it creates two characters and that's by design. You could replace @CRLF with a "@CR & @LF".

So for your question: When you want to work with the files in Windows use @CRLF.

LOL, thanks. My AutoIT project doesn't deal too much with working with Windows files so perhaps that's why I barely notice the difference. I used @LF and @CRLF interchangeably when I want to put line breaks in msgboxes, tooltips, traytips, etc.

[jchd]

In addition to what Hannes said:

The Scite console is quite smart to figure that you want a single line break in all cases you tested.

Most recent and all decent text editors allow you to use any line break combination.

BUT you need to check the other applications which will be using the text files you produce or modify and verify they don't behave unexpectedly when they encounter line-terminations distinct from what they expect.

As a general rule of thumb, Hannes advice to stick with @CRLF in Windows context is a safe bet.

FYI those names come from the times when typewriter devices (Google for LA36 for instance) were used before CRT terminals appeared (and long after them!). CR meant exactly that: make the print head return to home (leftmost position) and LF caused the paper to advance one line, without moving the print head. So the combination of both was actually required to skip to the home position of a new line. The operator however never had to hit two keys to do that, just hit Return, which was internally translated into either LF or CR (depending on the underlying system) and understood by the terminal driver as a request to "print" CRLF.

[Tralveller]

Hello,

I know it's an old topic, but I had problem during redirect AutoIt command line output to log file with Windows Batch script.

Example:

ConsoleWrite ("Line 1" & @LF)
ConsoleWrite ("Line 2" & @LF)

Perform compiled exe output in batch command line redirected to log file as a result in Batch log file ConsoleWrite output is:

Line 1Line 2

Using "@CRLF":

ConsoleWrite ("Line 1" & @CRLF)
ConsoleWrite ("Line 2" & @CRLF)

and perform compiled exe output in batch command line redirected to log file as a result in Batch log file ConsoleWrite output was now correct:

Line 1
Line 2

Thanks to @hannes08 for explanation