C# 11: New raw string literals feature makes my life easier!

The best new feature of C# 11 for me is raw string literals.

In this post, I explain the scenario when I use the new feature.

Escape Double Quotation

I often use a JSON string in my unit tests to arrange mock data. The pain point was that I need to escape double quotation like this.

var json = @"
{
    ""key"":""value""
}
";

With C# 11 new feature, I can use triple double quotations at the beginning and the end so that I don't need to escape it inside the content.

var json = """
{
    "key":"value"
}
""";

If I need to use triple double quotation inside the content, I can add one more quotation.

Escape Curly Braces

When I create mock data, I often use variable in string format which uses curly braces. I also need to escape curly braces as JSON string uses curly braces. Before C# 11, it looks like this.

var json = $@"
{{
    ""key"":""{value}""
}}";

With C# 11 new feature, I can add an additional dollar mark to indicate how many curly braces I use for string format, so that I don't need to escape the curly braces in the content.

var json = $$"""
{
   "key":"{{value}}"
}
""";

Indentation

Indentation is important in C#, but I couldn't use indent as I wanted because if I use indent inside the JSON string, it was a part of content itself.

For example, I write a code snippet like this.

Console.WriteLine(JSON());

string JSON()
{
    return @"
    {
        ""key"":""value""
    }
    ";
}

The result contains spaces.

With C# 11, I can write similar code.

Console.WriteLine(JSON());

string JSON()
{
    return """
    {
        "key":"value"
    }
    """;
}

Then I have the expected result.

The closing """ indicate the starting line. So if I write code like below, I can include spaces.

Console.WriteLine(JSON());

string JSON()
{
    return """
        {
            "key":"value"
        }
    """;
}

Visual Studio visualizes the line as well.

Summary

I really love this feature and we all should start using this whenever we use JSON, XML or any other string we had to escape before.