line breaks lost in sql server

Question

I am entering error information into an ErrorLog table in my database. I have a utility class to do this:

ErrorHandler.Error(\"Something has broken!!\\n\\nDe         


        

Answer 1

I echo David C's answer, except you should use the "TYPE" keyword so that you can click to open the data in a new window.

Note that any unsafe XML characters will not work well with either of our solutions.

Here is a proof of concept:

DECLARE @ErrorLog TABLE (ErrorText varchar(500), ErrorDate datetime);
INSERT INTO @ErrorLog (ErrorText, ErrorDate) VALUES
    ('This is a long string with a' + CHAR(13) + CHAR(10) + 'line break.', getdate()-1),
    ('Another long string with' + CHAR(13) + CHAR(10) + ' line break.', getdate()-2);
SELECT
    (
        SELECT  ErrorText AS '*'
        FOR XML PATH(''), TYPE
    ) AS 'ErrorText',
    ErrorDate
FROM        @ErrorLog
ORDER BY    ErrorDate;

I can confirm that the line breaks are preserved when copying out of a grid in SSMS 2012.