I had a problem reading multi-line strings (with \n line feeds) from text files using file_str_read. The solution produced a small function I decided to share, because it may be useful for other matters.


1) A search and replace function

Code:

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STRING clipstr;
function searchAndReplace(str,searchstr,replacestr)
{
	str_cpy(clipstr,str);
	var foundat;
	foundat = str_stri(clipstr,searchstr);
	
	while(foundat)
	{
		str_trunc(str,str_len(clipstr)-foundat+1);
		str_cat(str,replacestr);
		str_clip(clipstr,foundat+str_len(searchstr)-1);
		str_cat(str,clipstr);
		foundat = str_stri(clipstr,searchstr);
	}
	
}	


Example:
mystring="could not read the file";
searchAndReplace(mystring,"read","LOAD");
//mystring now is: "could not LOAD the file";

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2) The 'special characters' trick

Code:

---

// ...somewhere in your text loading function
file_str_read(mystring);
searchAndReplace(mystring,"\\n","\n"); //replaces "\n" with linefeeds in the string
text.string[0] = mystring;

---

Explanation: special characters are converted directly in C-Script. When you code:
STRING mystring = "Multi \n Line";
You are not putting a real '\n' in the string. The engine replaces the \n for a linefeed.

The same works inverse: if your text file contains "Multi \n Line", the engine doesn't see a linefeed, but a backslash and a 'n'. Thus, you must scan the text looking for a backslash and a 'n' and replacing that by a linefeed.

The special character for backslash is "\\".
So, if you search for "\\n" and replace it by "\n", you are asking "search the text for a backslash followed by 'n' and replace them by a linefeed".