Line ending difference - Windows vs Linux Mac : Line Breaks \n CRLF explained and resolutions in Python, Java, Javascript, C++, Node.JS etc

The Windows environment and the UNIX environment use different end of line characters.  So, if you are sharing files between the environments, one of the environments sees end of line characters at the end of each line of text that it does not normally expect, while the other may give error.

In general, z/OS UNIX text files contain a newline character at the end of each line. In ASCII, newline is X'0A'. In EBCDIC, newline is X'15'. (For example, ASCII code page ISO8859-1 and EBCDIC code page IBM-1047 translate back and forth between these characters.) Windows programs normally use a carriage return followed by a line feed character at the end of each line of a text file. In ASCII, carriage return/line feed is X'0D'/X'0A'. In EBCDIC, carriage return/line feed is X'0D'/X'15'.



As per my research, when you give a Line break there are different behaviours or interpretation based on the platform you are using:

• Windows: '\r\n'
• Mac (OS 9-): '\r'
• Mac (OS 10+): '\n'
• Unix/Linux: '\n'

Resolution:

Identify in the program which operating system you are using. From there find the Line separator value. Following are the methods you can use for some different programming languages you would use:


Python:

import os
os.linesep

Java:

System.lineSeparator()

NodeJS:

require('os').EOL

C++:

Many methods including Boost Library
One method QDir::separator().toAscii()

C#

string eol = Environment.NewLine;


Cheers :)

New line in ReadMe file Github: Fixing the blank new line break issue in ReadMe.Md files in Github

This post is aimed to fix a very simple issue - Fixing the blank new line break issue in ReadMe.Md files in Github. You can find the ReadMe.Md file which had this problem and how it was fixed in my Github repository: https://github.com/Anwar-Faiz/Simple-Java-Unicode


When editing an issue and clicking Preview the following lines in Read me file:
a
b
c
i.e. it shows every letter on a new line.

However, it seems sometimes that after pushing similar markdown source structure in README.md joins all the letters on one line.

Issue: This usually happens because of different Operating systems and text editors used.


Solution:
Interpreting newlines as
used to be a feature of Github. But recent documentations do not list this as a feature. So, you have to do it manually. But its easy!

Method 1: Introduce a __ character at end of each line. _ acts as a blank space
i.e transform:
a
b
c
as following in the ReadMe.md file:
a__
b__
c
(where ).

Method 2: Explicitly add
tags.
Eg:
a
b
c


I personally prefer method 2 for a number of reasons. For example you can see following commit of mine just to fix the same issue:
https://github.com/Anwar-Faiz/Simple-Java-Unicode/commit/85bd54531067ff4055c5e8801aba5324221d5ae3


Using Github ReadMe opened programatically : How to open and read the ReadMe.md file dynamically: https://www.w3lc.com/2017/05/using-github-readme-opened.html

New line in ReadMe file Github: Fixing the blank new line break issue in ReadMe.Md files in Github
https://www.w3lc.com/2017/05/new-line-in-readme-file-github-fixing.html

To create sophisticated formatting for your prose and code on GitHub with simple syntax, you can refer the basic writing and formatting syntax at: https://help.github.com/articles/basic-writing-and-formatting-syntax/

Cheers ;)
Anwar Faiz