How would you add a multi-line property to

~/.gradle/gradle.properties

(e.g., in-memory GPG key)?

\n

, as per https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/util/Properties.html#load-java.io.Reader-

Or by escaping the line end with a backslash

doesn't that result in a line continuation though?

D'oh, you're right of course.

This is a context-specific answer, but

\

is fine for an in-memory GPG key. Any whitespace works; it doesn't have to be a newline. The main thing I was trying to figure out if there was something more efficient than adding that to a bunch of lines. But I guess not.

you need newlines for ASCII armored keys, at least the header and the footer, which might look like

key=\n\
 -----BEGIN PGP PRIVATE KEY BLOCK-----\n\
 ...\n\
 -----END PGP PRIVATE KEY BLOCK-----\n

but if a raw key is fine then you don't need

\n

, and you can use line continuations to split up a long line however you want