Java text blocks series#

More info : and in this very complete article by Nicolai Parlog : But as this functionality is a preview feature, you need to activate it via -enable-preview to be able to use them : JDK-8203444 – String::formatted, JDK-8223775 – String::stripIndent et JDK-8223781 – String::translateEscapes. To implement Text Blocks, new methods has been added to the String class. You can use double-quote inside a Text Block.

If there is a new line at the end of the Text Block, it’s position will define the incidental indentation instead of the Text Block first character.

If there is one it will be added to the end of the string !

Delete the incidental indentation and the first line break.

Concretely, the indentation is done by deleting the identation before the first letter (so here we delete the indentation before the H of Hello), this is called the incidental indentation. Speaking of indentation, this is what is the most specific about this new functionality : a complex algorithm has been implemented to keep the indentation as the developer intended to define it. Instead of using a single escape character, they use an escape sequence: ''' (''' Text Blocks don’t add a lot of new functionalities (they are not raw string, there is no string interpolation, …), they only allow to write strings on multiple lines, and automatically manage the indentation for us. This is the main new functionality in the version 13 of Java, the capability to write Text Blocks : a new type of String Literal that allow to write them on multiple lines. Besides the new Text Block that replaces the Raw Strings, there is not a lot of modifications on the JDK.

Java text blocks series#

This article is part of a series on what’s new on the last versions of Java, for those who wants to read the others, here are the links : Java 12, Java 11, Java 10, and Java 9.įorce is to note that, again, there is not a lot of new functionalities in this release. Now that Java 13 is features complete (Release Candidate at the day of writing), it’s time to walk throught all it’s functionalities that brings to us, developers, this new version.