Understanding Line Break Characters
Before diving in, it’s important to understand the different characters that represent line breaks. The most common are:
1. Line Feed (LF): Represented by CHAR(10) or \n, is a character or escape sequence that instructs a text cursor to move down one line in a document or text file without changing its horizontal position.
2. Carriage return (CR): Indicated by CHAR(13) or \r, moves the cursor to the beginning of the current line.
3. Carriage return + Line feed (CRLF): Represented by CHAR(13) + CHAR(10) or \r\n, the most widely used combination to add line breaks independent of the platform.
How to Insert a Line Break in a SQL VARCHAR
In SQL, VARCHAR and NVARCHAR are widely used data types for storing character data. It may sometimes be necessary to insert line breaks into these string values for better readability or to display the information in a formatted manner. Although SQL itself does not have a specific newline character, there are methods to achieve this.
In this article, we will explore different approaches to inserting line breaks into VARCHAR and NVARCHAR SQL strings.