如何比较多行字符串

Question

I have a method which is generating the following, which i am saving in a string, lets say that string is name output

HDRPB509030978SENTRIC MUSIC                                01.102013070914290620130709               
GRHREV0000102.100000000000  
REV0000000000000000AWAITING YOUR CALL                                          EN00000000044021                               POP000436Y      ORI         PHIL 
TRL000010000000100000022   

what i am trying is to hard code the above line and compare it to the generated output. I am hard-coding like this i am replacing the next lines with \\n like this

string hardCoded = "    HDRPB509030978SENTRIC MUSIC                              \n01.102013070914290620130709                   \n    GRHREV0000102.100000000000      \n    REV0000000000000000AWAITING YOUR CALL                                          \nEN00000000044021                               POP000436Y      ORI         PHIL     \n    TRL000010000000100000022   "

now when i compare

output == hardCoded 

OR

Assert.AreEqual(output,hardCoded);

is is false. how to compare these two

Answer 1

Comparing multi-line strings is not different from comparing single-line strings: the strings you compare must match character-for-character, including whitespace and line breaks. If your generated string uses \\r\\n separator instead of \\n , then the string constant that you expect to get must contain the same separator as well. You can check the kind of separators that you use by setting a breakpoint, and examining the string that you generate in a debugger.

Rather than hard-coding the string for unit testing, consider reading it from a resource. This would let you edit the string in a text editor, and inspect it visually for differences.

Finally, if you do not need the whitespace to match, you could define a function that compares strings excluding whitespace:

static bool EqualsExcludingWhitespace(String a, String b) {
    return a.Where(c => !Char.IsWhiteSpace(c))
       .SequenceEqual(b.Where(c => !Char.IsWhiteSpace(c)));
}