How to add a line to a multiline TextBox?

I would go with the System.Environment.NewLine or a StringBuilder

Then you could add lines with a string builder like this:

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
sb.AppendLine("brown");
sb.AppendLine("brwn");

textbox1.Text += sb.ToString();

or NewLine like this:

textbox1.Text += System.Environment.NewLine + "brown";

Better:

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(textbox1.Text);
sb.AppendLine("brown");
sb.AppendLine("brwn");

textbox1.Text = sb.ToString();

@Casperah pointed out that i'm thinking about it wrong:

  • A TextBox doesn't have lines
  • it has text
  • that text can be split on the CRLF into lines, if requested
  • but there is no notion of lines

The question then is how to accomplish what i want, rather than what WinForms lets me.

There are subtle bugs in the other given variants:

  • textBox1.AppendText("Hello" + Environment.NewLine);
  • textBox1.AppendText("Hello" + "\r\n");
  • textBox1.Text += "Hello\r\n"
  • textbox1.Text += System.Environment.NewLine + "brown";

They either append or prepend a newline when one (might) not be required.

So, extension helper:

public static class WinFormsExtensions
{
   public static void AppendLine(this TextBox source, string value)
   {
      if (source.Text.Length==0)
         source.Text = value;
      else
         source.AppendText("\r\n"+value);
   }
}

So now:

textBox1.Clear();
textBox1.AppendLine("red");
textBox1.AppendLine("green");
textBox1.AppendLine("blue");

and

textBox1.AppendLine(String.Format("Processing file {0}", filename));

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