Entering a newline on Windows

Getting a line feed into an input on *nix is pretty easy, all you do is hit return in the middle of a quoted input:

  % ruby -e 'puts ARGV.inspect' 'line one
  > line two'
  ["line one\nline two"]

On Windows, it’s more verbose.  Use a caret, the MS-DOS escape character, to ignore the next line feed:

  % ruby -e 'puts ARGV.inspect' 'line one^
  More?
  More? line two'
  ["line one\nline two"]

Notice that pressing enter every other line is what actually puts the “\n” into the argument . Keep using carets to enter more lines.

The syntax on Windows isn’t exactly pretty, and sadly it doesn’t work with gem executables; the .bat scripts generated by rubygems re-processes inputs before calling the .rb executable and the extra lines get lost in translation.  Still, it’s nice to know it’s (sort-of) possible!