[MC-116944] \n and \u in written books do not work

\n in written books not creating new line, giving the error below.

Data tag parsing failed: Invalid escape of 'n' at: {pages:["[\"\",{\"text\":\"one\n<--[HERE]

This is an example below, works in versions 17w15a and lower.

/give @p written_book 1 0 {pages:["[\"\",{\"text\":\"one\ntwo\nthree\"}]"],title:Test,author:Test}

This issue was reported in MC-116553 but not enough information was given.

Linked issues

is duplicated by 3

MC-117080 Entering "\u" into a sign (JSON) won't work. Resolved

MC-117847 commands broken Resolved

MC-118047 Can not use \n Resolved

Comments 5

marcono1234 2017-05-03T15:06:27Z

Probably intended and caused by the changes to the NBT parser. Escaping the backslashes in front of the "n" solves this.

Tronics 2017-05-04T04:01:30Z

Confirmed for 17w18a

I upvote this bug report because it's very annoying.

A workaround is to double escape the \n :

\\n

The following example work as intented:

/give @p written_book 1 0 {pages:["{\"text\":\"My\\nBook\"}"],title:"My Book",author:Me}

Benjamin Nitschke 2017-05-04T07:45:56Z

A workaround is better than nothing, I can work with that for now. Its still a bit strange it changed like that.
Thanks for the information Marcono and Tronics.

marcono1234 2017-05-08T11:02:31Z

See also MC-117080.

After looking at it again this should be indeed intended. The NBT string parser does not know escaping sequences like \n and it
did not knew them before either, it only acted weird with backslashes treating a single backslash like an escaped one:

/summon armor_stand ~ ~ ~ {CustomName:\} -> "\"
/summon armor_stand ~ ~ ~ {CustomName:\\} -> "\"

user-f2760 2017-05-08T11:03:45Z

\\n

needs to be used.