Can't escape new line in object

Question

I can't escape a new line when it is in an object. I just did this in Node. Anyone have an idea how this can be done?

var result =  {
    key1: "This is a line\n with new\n lines\n.",
    key2: "No new lines here."
};

Here are my results:

result
Object

var myTemp = JSON.stringify(result);

Here are the results

‌‌ myTemp
‌ {"key1":"This is a line\n with new\n lines\n.","key2":"No new lines here."}

var newTemp = myTemp.replace(/\\n/g, "\\n");

Finally, here are the final results.

‌‌ newTemp
‌ {"key1":"This is a line\n with new\n lines\n.","key2":"No new lines here."}

Notice how it is still \n, not \\n.

Why would you want to get `\\n`? That's not an escaped newline, that's an escaped backslash followed by an n character. — Bergi, May 15 '17 at 20:42

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered May 15 '17 at 20:32

Your regex needs to be escaped, too: myTemp.replace(/\\n/g, "\n")

Reason:

\n matches actual new line characters
\\n matches the representation of a new line character given by the characters "\" followed by "n" as it can be found in the JSON string.

score -1 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:26

-1

Based on an answer on StackOverflow here: JavaScript string newline character?

Below is the safest way to escape new lines:

var key1 = "This is a line\n with new\n lines\n.";
var k2 = key1.replace(/\r\n|\r|\n/g,'');

edited May 23 '17 at 12:26

Community

answered May 15 '17 at 20:36

This will actually remove the new line characters entirely, which is not the same as escaping them (almost opposite)! – Kendall Jan 25 '22 at 16:56

2 Answers2