Backslash (Line Continuation) (Transact-SQL)

Article
02/28/2023

Applies to: SQL Server Azure SQL Database Azure SQL Managed Instance

\ breaks a long string constant, character or binary, into two or more lines for readability.

Syntax

<first section of string> \  
<continued section of string>

Note

To view Transact-SQL syntax for SQL Server 2014 (12.x) and earlier versions, see Previous versions documentation.

Arguments

<first section of string>
Is the start of a string.

<continued section of string>
Is the continuation of a string.

Remarks

This command returns the first and continued sections of the string as one string, without the backslash. The new line after the backslash must either be a line feed character (U+000A) or a combination of carriage return (U+000D) and line feed (U+000A) in that order.

Examples

A. Splitting a character string

The following example uses a backslash and a carriage return to split a character string into two lines.

SELECT 'abc\  
def' AS [ColumnResult];

Here is the result set.

ColumnResult  
------------  
abcdef

B. Splitting a binary string

The following example uses a backslash and a carriage return to split a binary string into two lines.

SELECT 0xabc\
def AS [ColumnResult];