C#: Finding out if the last element in a List<string> is a carriage return?

Question

The logic I'm trying to use is this:
1. Look at the last element of the List
2. If it is a new line (carriage return), delete it

        int stringLength = mailingList.Count;

        if (mailingList[stringLength - 1].Equals(Environment.NewLine))
        {
            //mailingList.RemoveAt(stringLength - 1);
            txtOutput.Text = "exists";
        }

        else
        {
            txtOutput.Text = "does not exist";
        }

But no matter what I use, I'm not able to get this to work. I've also tried using:

if (mailingList[stringLength - 1] == "\r\n")

And this doesn't work either. From my output testing, I keep getting "does not exist".

How do I identify whether the last element is a new line or not?

Any help would be great!

Thanks, Ray

Answer 1

Well, then the last element probably isn't a new line.

How to you get the lines? Do you split a textbox? Then you won't get new lines, you will get an empty string. Then you should do something like:

if (string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(mailingList.LastOrDefault())

What you likely should do before you take out the lines is to Trim the textbox text.

Answer 2

Use LINQ

mailingList.LastOrDefault() == Environment.NewLine

this will cover the case if there are no elements in the list.

Answer 3

Some systems use only \n for newline, some even use only \r

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newline

Answer 4

This code

List<string> list = new List<string>();
list.Add(Environment.NewLine);
if (list[0].Equals(Environment.NewLine))
    System.Console.WriteLine("found newline");

prints the text "found newline" to the console. Therefore I can only conclude that your list does not contain a newline in the last item.

We can only guess why that is because we can't see your code that populates the list.