ASCII Enter Character (Line Feed)

The Enter character, technically called Line Feed (LF), has ASCII code 10. It creates a new line in text and is essential for formatting multi-line content in programming and text processing.

Newline Character Visualization

The newline character creates line breaks in text:

Line 1 Line 2 Line 3

Red dashed boxes with arrows represent newline characters

Character Information

Property Value
ASCII Code (Decimal) 10
ASCII Code (Hexadecimal) 0A
ASCII Code (Binary) 0001010
Unicode U+000A
HTML Entity 
 or 

Escape Sequence \n
Character Name Line Feed (LF)
Character Type Control Character, Whitespace

Line Ending Types

System Line Ending ASCII Codes Escape Sequence
Unix/Linux/macOS Line Feed (LF) 10 \n
Windows Carriage Return + Line Feed (CRLF) 13 + 10 \r\n
Classic Mac (pre-OS X) Carriage Return (CR) 13 \r

Programming Examples

JavaScript

// Creating newlines
let newline = '\n'; // Line feed
let text = "Line 1\nLine 2\nLine 3"; // Multi-line string
let fromCode = String.fromCharCode(10); // From ASCII code

// Working with newlines
let lines = text.split('\n'); // Split on newlines
console.log("Hello\nWorld"); // Print with newline
let joined = lines.join('\n'); // Join with newlines

Python

# Creating newlines
newline = '\n' # Line feed
text = "Line 1\nLine 2\nLine 3" # Multi-line string
from_code = chr(10) # From ASCII code

# Working with newlines
lines = text.split('\n') # Split on newlines
print("Hello\nWorld") # Print with newline
joined = '\n'.join(lines) # Join with newlines

C/C++

// Creating newlines
char newline = '\n'; // Line feed
char newline_code = 10; // From ASCII code
char* text = "Line 1\nLine 2\nLine 3"; // Multi-line string

// Working with newlines
printf("Hello\nWorld\n"); // Print with newlines
if (ch == '\n') { // Check for newline
    // Handle newline character
}

Common Uses

  • Text Formatting: Creating paragraphs and line breaks in documents
  • Code Structure: Separating lines of code for readability
  • Data Files: Delimiting records in text-based data formats
  • Console Output: Formatting terminal and console output
  • File Processing: Reading and writing multi-line text files
  • Web Development: Creating line breaks in HTML and text content
  • Configuration Files: Separating configuration entries

Cross-Platform Considerations

  • Git: Automatically handles line ending conversions
  • Text Editors: Most modern editors handle different line endings
  • Programming: Use language-specific newline constants when possible
  • File Transfer: Be aware of line ending changes when moving files
  • Web Forms: HTML forms may send different line endings

See also