Difference between "\n" and Environment.NewLine

What is the difference between two, if any (with respect to .Net)?

Depends on the platform. On Windows it is actually "\r\n".

From MSDN:

> A string containing "\r\n" for > non-Unix platforms, or a string > containing "\n" for Unix platforms.

Exact implementation of Environment.NewLine from the source code:

The implementation in .NET 4.6.1:

/*===================================NewLine====================================
**Action: A property which returns the appropriate newline string for the given
**        platform.
**Returns: \r\n on Win32.
**Arguments: None.
**Exceptions: None.
==============================================================================*/
public static String NewLine {
    get {
        Contract.Ensures(Contract.Result<String>() != null);
        return "\r\n";
    }
}

source

---

The implementation in .NET Core:

/*===================================NewLine====================================
**Action: A property which returns the appropriate newline string for the
**        given platform.
**Returns: \r\n on Win32.
**Arguments: None.
**Exceptions: None.
==============================================================================*/
public static String NewLine {
    get {
        Contract.Ensures(Contract.Result() != null);
#if !PLATFORM_UNIX
        return "\r\n";
#else
        return "\n";
#endif // !PLATFORM_UNIX
    }
}

source (in System.Private.CoreLib)

public static string NewLine => "\r\n";

source (in System.Runtime.Extensions)

As others have mentioned, Environment.NewLine returns a platform-specific string for beginning a new line, which should be:

• "\r\n" (\u000D\u000A) for Windows
• "\n" (\u000A) for Unix
• "\r" (\u000D) for Mac (if such implementation existed)

Note that when writing to the console, Environment.NewLine is not strictly necessary. The console stream will translate "\n" to the appropriate new-line sequence, if necessary.

Environment.NewLine will return the newline character for the corresponding platform in which your code is running

you will find this very useful when you deploy your code in linux on the Mono framework

From the docs ...

> A string containing "\r\n" for > non-Unix platforms, or a string > containing "\n" for Unix platforms.

You might get into trouble when you try to display multi-line message separated with "\r\n".

It is always a good practice to do things in a standard way, and use Environment.NewLine

Environment.NewLine will give "\r\n" when run on Windows. If you are generating strings for Unix based environments, you don't want the "\r".