Unterminated string literal for db data in javascript

Question

Here is my code output with passing the data to the console:

console.log('
FUN, FRIENDLY,  * New PRIVATE PARTY ROOM with stage, 70" Satellite TV, comfortable lounge seating
Exciting Bachelor Parties, Unique Surprise Birthday Parties, Divorce, Retirement....You Own IT!
Party includes: 90 Minutes Open Bar, Dedicated Waitress, complimentary Dance of choice for the guest of honor, '.trim());

My result is: SyntaxError: unterminated string literal.

I understand that this is an issue with breaking new lines in javascript and i need to use \ but this is dynamic data as follows:

var b = '<xsl:value-of select="./description"/>'; <--- the output above gets assigned here

So, how do I resolve this issue? The application is not outputting this text on the log. its showing blank Should I Replace \n with \ ?

Not quite sure of the solution.

Ven · Accepted Answer · 2016-04-21 20:04:04Z

1

The easy solution is just to escape newlines. You want to keep the \n, but only in the string literal form.

Let me give you an example...

You have "\n", which is a literal newline. You want to get "\n", so that the first slash escapes the second.

You can't replace "\" with "\" (or "\" with "\\", to follow correct escaping), because "\n" is only one character.

What you want is simply

yourstring.replace(/\n/g, "\\n");

This performs a RegExp substitution on your string (the first argument is the pattern to look for. I use the "g" flag - global - so that every newline is replaced, not only the first one). The second argument is the replacement - in our case, it's a string literal, but if you needed to generated a value based on your matched pattern, you could use a function.

answered Apr 21, 2016 at 20:04

Ven

19k2 gold badges44 silver badges62 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

Comments

Naman Nehra · Accepted Answer · 2016-04-21 20:06:25Z

You can replace \n with \\\n. First two \ will result in a single backslash being part of output. \n in the end will result in line break.

Your code output will look like:

console.log('\
FUN, FRIENDLY,  * New PRIVATE PARTY ROOM with stage, 70" Satellite TV, comfortable lounge seating\
Exciting Bachelor Parties, Unique Surprise Birthday Parties, Divorce, Retirement....You Own IT!\
Party includes: 90 Minutes Open Bar, Dedicated Waitress, complimentary Dance of choice for the guest of honor, '.trim());

If you need to use actual line breaks in the application then replace \n with \\n . Output will be

console.log('\nFUN, FRIENDLY,  * New PRIVATE PARTY ROOM with stage, 70" Satellite TV, comfortable lounge seating\nExciting Bachelor Parties, Unique Surprise Birthday Parties, Divorce, Retirement....You Own IT!\nParty includes: 90 Minutes Open Bar, Dedicated Waitress, complimentary Dance of choice for the guest of honor, '.trim());

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Unterminated string literal for db data in javascript

2 Answers 2

Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

2 Answers 2

Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related