I am trying to itterate over a list that is delimited with '\n' using cfloop, but it keeps delimiting at every 'n' is the backslash a special character for cfloop? Any ideas how to make this work?

<!--- sample errors --->
<cfsavecontent variable="session.orderEntryData.shipment.errors">
                        <cfoutput>Error 1: Invalid shipping address.\nError 2: Payment method declined.\nError 3: Item out of stock.\nError 4: Invalid coupon code.\nError 5: Exceeded maximum order quantity.</cfoutput>
                    </cfsavecontent>


                    <div class="col-lg-12">
                        <!--- error handling --->
                        <div class="container p-3 mt-4 border rounded border-danger">
                            <div class="row ">
                                <div class="col-12 p-2 pt-1" >
                                    <div class="row">
                                        <div class="col-12">
                                            <!--- Header Text --->
                                            <div class="row">
                                                <div class="col-11 align-middle mb-3 justify-content-center d-flex">
                                                    <span class="text-left route-card-header text-danger" >Your submission generated the folowing errors</span>
                                                </div>
                                            </div>
                                            <div class="row">
                                                <div class="col-12">
                                                    <cfloop list="#session.orderEntryData.shipment.errors#" delimiters="\n" index="error">
                                                        <div class="alert alert-danger" role="alert">
                                                            <cfoutput>#error#</cfoutput>
                                                        </div>
                                                    </cfloop>
                                                </div>
                                            </div>
                                        </div>
                                    </div>
                                </div>
                            </div>
                        </div>

did you try using the character code for \ ? e.g. delimiters="#chr('\')#n"

no, will give it a try now thanks

\n is not a special character in ColdFusion you will need to create a variable that contains your CR there are multiple ways to do this including chr(10), you just need to bemindful of what line endings on your OS are... in one of my systems i have special constants to hold these values: "CRLF" : CHR(13) & CHR(10), "CR" : CHR(10),

<cfset delim=chr(92)&"n">

<cfloop list="#session.orderEntryData.shipment.errors#" delimiters="#delim#" index="error">

<div class="alert alert-danger" role="alert">

<cfoutput>#error#</cfoutput>

</div>

</cfloop>

You could also try replacing all of the "\n" with a safe delimiter character like a pipe

|

character, then loop using the new delimiter.

will try that

awesome!

i used three pipes as the delimeter just incase there is a single one somewhere, i dont know what the output of the api is going to be.

I believe <cfloop list excepts multiple delimiters if you are doing a replacement i would replace on a character you might never have in your data like chr(29) ASCII Code 29 - Group Separator

@Michael Schmidt thanks i made the change!

Michael is correct-- each char is individually used as a delim, it's not a single delimiter string. Doing a replace is the best approach, if possible. Otherwise, you'd need to do a manual find in a loop.

Just to say it, if possible I'd convert the list to an array and iterate over that instead. You'll still need to figure out hat delimiters to use converting to an array, but the code will be nicer, and I'd expect performance to improve too, since you're only parsing the list once.

Presumably, cfloop only parses the string once already

Unless cf is smart enough to parse the list into an array itself under the hood, it's going to be dealing with that loop as a bunch of string finding -- where's the next delimiter etc. Maybe it is, and I haven't tested performance of those two strategies for a number of years, but converting to an array ONCE used to be a lot faster.

That's exactly what it does. Well, I can't see Adobe's source like I can BoxLang and Lucee, but it's a 99% certainty Adobe follows suit. When you cfloop over a list, the array is created internally and then dealt with from there.

Cool, then you're right, no reason to explicitly convert to an array, unless you like that form of iteration better, which I do 🙂

Agreed. If I'm doing anything else at all with the data, I'd much rather have an array on hand!

Yeah we're on the same page then.

The list structure in ColdFusion is both a gift and a curse. It is powerful, but sometimes to powerful, if you know you know.