Embed Code and Avoid Underscores in Your Multiline Strings

re: Embed Code and Avoid Underscores in Your Multiline Strings

Josh Stodola — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 23:41:33 GMT

I have rug burn on my chin because of this post!

I simply can NOT wait for the release, this is gonna be so awesome.

re: Embed Code and Avoid Underscores in Your Multiline Strings

Beth Massi — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 00:39:09 GMT

Josh,

LOL! You can give it a try right now (Beta 2) if you have an extra machine or Virtual Machine laying around: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/aa700831.aspx

And congrats on starting your blog! ;-)

re: Embed Code and Avoid Underscores in Your Multiline Strings

Josh Stodola — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 16:53:55 GMT

I'd love to give it a try but I dont an extra machine laying around. Ok, well I do, but it is an antique unworthy of any version of VS!!

Thanks :)

I might ask around at work and see if there is a "playground" machine I can have for a while.

re: Embed Code and Avoid Underscores in Your Multiline Strings

Billy Hollis — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 18:50:32 GMT

Beth, I'm stealing, er, uh, borrowing some of these examples for my "What's new in VB9" talk at DevConnections Las Vegas. Your name will be mentioned prominently.

re: Embed Code and Avoid Underscores in Your Multiline Strings

Beth Massi — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 19:08:28 GMT

Hi Billy!,

For you, anything! ;-) Ping me directly if you need any more demos, decks, etc. I'll be speaking at Silicon Valley code-camp this weekend and then QCon in SF Nov 9th so I've pulling demos together this week.

-B

VB9 XML Literals

Manos Kelaiditis' Weblog — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 09:47:40 GMT

Ένα από τα νέα χαρακτηριστικά της VB.NET είναι η υποστήριξη XML Literals. Πρόκειται για τη δυνατότητα

XML Literals Tips/Tricks

Beth Massi - Sharing the goodness that is VB — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 23:09:45 GMT

A couple quick tips here when using XML literals in your Visual Basic programs. #1: I've started using

re: Embed Code and Avoid Underscores in Your Multiline Strings

Sven Groot — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 12:19:14 GMT

Hi Beth,

XML literals are one of my favourite new features in VB9, really looking forward to using this in a real product.

I'm not sure I like it for multiline strings though, because of the break in indentation. It's still a pretty cool idea though. :)

New Visual Basic LINQ to XML Videos Released! (Beth Massi)

The Visual Basic Team — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 22:08:50 GMT

We just released a new set of How-Do-I videos in our LINQ series on LINQ to XML in Visual Basic. These

New Visual Basic LINQ to XML Videos Released!

Beth Massi - Sharing the goodness that is VB — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 19:02:42 GMT

We just released a new set of How-Do-I videos in our LINQ series on LINQ to XML in Visual Basic. These

Mail Merging with Word, LINQ and XML Literals in VB

Beth Massi - Sharing the goodness that is VB — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 05:26:51 GMT

I've mentioned before that you can use XML literals in VB 9 to do text merging so I figured it should

Mail Merging with Word, LINQ and XML Literals in VB

Noticias externas — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 06:01:27 GMT

I've mentioned before that you can use XML literals in VB 9 to do text merging so I figured it should

Using XML Literals in Code Generation

Noticias externas — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 01:06:22 GMT

A while back I showed a very simple way you could use XML Literals to generate code. In my previous life

re: Embed Code and Avoid Underscores in Your Multiline Strings

Nishtha — Thu, 08 May 2008 16:18:32 GMT

Can you please let us know if VB can read a text file of around 90 MB file size and process relevant data out of it.

Thanks

Nishtha

re: Embed Code and Avoid Underscores in Your Multiline Strings

Robin Lewis — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 19:24:39 GMT

So why did it take Microsoft 16 years to implement a form of multi-line strings? (Working from the original May 1991 release date for VB 1.0, Comdex/Windows World trade show in Atlanta, Georgia) The original bourne shell released with Unix Version 7 (in 1977) had here-documents.

re: Embed Code and Avoid Underscores in Your Multiline Strings

vbuser — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 23:02:55 GMT

should be able to

dim s as string

s = |

This is

multiline

string|

VB and LotusScript supported this simple method. Using the suggested xml text is buggy. You will get errors in Studio 08 depending on what is in the text (and its all text with no <> substitutions). I can't use the suggestion above because it only sometimes works and isn't predictable.

re: Embed Code and Avoid Underscores in Your Multiline Strings

Beth Massi — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 23:22:20 GMT

Hi vbuser,

Can you show me an example of text that won't work?

Thanks,

-B

re: Embed Code and Avoid Underscores in Your Multiline Strings

Dan Neuman — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 23:38:09 GMT

Beth,

I really like this. I used the Text/EndText in VFP to write my SQL strings and it would be easy to copy commands between VFP and Query Analyzer.

Using your new construct, I am having problems with the following code where the visual studio compiler is giving me errors. It appears to not like my "less than" sign in the middle of the string... any ideas?

Dim sProblem = <myxml>select * from detailinfo where isnull(FaxedDate, '1900-1-1') < '1901-1-1'</myxml>

re: Embed Code and Avoid Underscores in Your Multiline Strings

Beth Massi — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 23:58:52 GMT

Hi Dan,

Remember that this is XML. All XML parsing rules apply so you cannot place < or > characters in the element. Here is a list of XML Entities that are reserved: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_XML_and_HTML_character_entity_references#Predefined_entities_in_XML

However you can still render them by using the entity's name instead. In your example it would be:

Dim sProblem = <myxml>select * from detailinfo where isnull(FaxedDate, '1900-1-1') < '1901-1-1'</myxml>

MsgBox(sProblem.Value)

HTH,

-B

re: Embed Code and Avoid Underscores in Your Multiline Strings

Dan Neuman — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 21:52:39 GMT

Beth,

Thank you for the quick response. Just couple more questions, my "coding police" wont let me use variants in my declarations. What is the datatype that is used for this? Also, as I try this in a few of my projects, I get very long error messages about system.xml is not available, eventhough it is listed at the top of the module.

dim sProblem as ???

re: Embed Code and Avoid Underscores in Your Multiline Strings

Beth Massi — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 22:28:15 GMT

Hi Dan,

You're using Visual Studio 2008 and Visual Basic 9 so the compiler will automatically infer the type of the variable. This is specified by Option Infer ON (which is the default in new projects). You should have Option Strict, Explicit and Infer all ON. Your statement above is not an Object (no variants in .NET ;-)) it is inferred by the compiler and still is strongly typed. Just hover over the variable and you should see the type of it. In this case it is an XElement. But you can be explict and say Dim sProblem as XElement = ... if that appeases the gods. It's just more typing ;-)

HTH,

-B

re: Embed Code and Avoid Underscores in Your Multiline Strings

Dan Neuman — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:32:51 GMT

ok, last question I hope. As I try this on a project that was upgraded from VS2005 to VS2008, I get an error message that reads "XML literals and XML axis properties are not available. Add references to System.xml, System.xml.linq, and system.core.

System.xml is already part of the project, and it won't allow me to add system.xml.linq. any ideas what I am missing?

re: Embed Code and Avoid Underscores in Your Multiline Strings

Beth Massi — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 23:43:25 GMT

Hi Dan,

You'll need to set the framework target to 3.5 first.

See:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/07bysfz2.aspx

and

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb398197.aspx

HTH,

-B

re: Embed Code and Avoid Underscores in Your Multiline Strings

Dan Neuman — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 21:49:43 GMT

Beth,

Someone just asked me to do this in C#. I love the ability to have the XML evalualated in the middle of the string with the <%=variable name%>. Do you know how I would do the same thing in C#?

I tried translating the statements, but I got stuck. If you could translate your "simple" example above, I can take it from there.

Thanks for everything.

Dan

re: Embed Code and Avoid Underscores in Your Multiline Strings

Beth Massi — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 21:59:13 GMT

Hi Dan,

C# doesn't support XML literals syntax. You'll need to call the LINQ to XML API directly.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb387061.aspx

HTH,

-B