Multi-line messages with loglayer.Multiline

loglayer.Multiline(lines ...any) lets you author a message that renders on multiple lines through cli, pretty, and console. It's a developer-issued token of trust: the wrapper signals that the line boundaries between elements were authored by you, so the sanitizer in those transports preserves the \n between them while still stripping ANSI / control bytes inside each line.

Quickstart

import "go.loglayer.dev/v2"

log.Info(loglayer.Multiline(
    "Configuration:",
    "  port: 8080",
    "  host: ::1",
))
// Configuration:
//   port: 8080
//   host: ::1

Multiline accepts any number of arguments and treats each one as a separate authored line. Non-string arguments are formatted with fmt.Sprintf("%v", v) (Stringer is honored). Strings containing embedded \n are split at construction, so Multiline("a\nb") and Multiline("a", "b") are interchangeable.

Why bare \n doesn't work

If you write log.Info("Header:\n port: 8080") without the wrapper, the cli, pretty, and console transports collapse it to one line:

Header:  port: 8080

The sanitizer at those rendering boundaries strips \n from message strings to defeat two attacks:

1. Log forging: untrusted input containing \n could write fake follow-up log lines that look like they came from your app.
2. Terminal escape smuggling: untrusted input containing ANSI ESC, bidi overrides (Trojan Source), or zero-width joiners could inject color codes, hide content, or exploit terminal vulns.

Multiline opts you out of the line-collapsing rule for this one call, while keeping every other defense intact. Each authored line is still individually sanitized.

What's preserved, what's stripped

Inside one authored line	Across authored lines
ANSI ESC: stripped	\n boundary: preserved
CR: stripped
Bidi overrides (U+202E etc.): stripped
Zero-width joiners / spaces: stripped

A bare string with \n (no wrapper, no trust) still has the \n stripped. Multiline("\x1b", "[31mred") cannot reconstruct an ANSI escape across the boundary because each line is sanitized in isolation before joining.

Per-transport behavior

Transport	Multiline("a","b")	"Header:", Multiline("a","b")
cli	a\nb (level-colored, on the level's writer)	Header: a\nb
pretty	[ts] [INFO] a\nb	[ts] [INFO] Header: a\nb
console	{"msg":"a\nb",...} (MessageField mode) or a\nb [k=v ...] (default)	analogous
structured	{"msg":"a\nb",...}	{"msg":"Header: a\nb",...}
zerolog / zap / slog / logrus / charmlog / phuslu	underlying logger writes "a\nb"	underlying logger writes "Header: a\nb"
sentry / otellog / gcplogging / http / datadog / testing	same: Stringer fallback joins with "\n"	same

With a prefix

WithPrefix folds the prefix into the first authored line; subsequent lines are unchanged.

log.WithPrefix("[svc]").Info(loglayer.Multiline("a", "b"))
// [svc] a
// b

Inside fields or metadata

Not honored inside Fields or Metadata

Multiline only applies when it appears as a positional message argument (log.Info(loglayer.Multiline(...)), log.Error(loglayer.Multiline(...)), etc.). Inside WithFields(...) or WithMetadata(...), terminal transports (cli, pretty, console) still sanitize each value to a single line, so a Multiline value placed there gets collapsed.

JSON sinks (structured + every wrapper transport) serialize Multiline values via MarshalJSON to the \n-joined string, so no data is silently lost in those sinks.

If you need multi-line value rendering for fields specifically, file an issue describing the use case; the right shape is a separate design (probably routing through pretty's expanded-YAML mode).

Plugin authors who walk params.Messages should preserve *MultilineMessage values; see Creating plugins. One built-in plugin where the wrapper is intentionally collapsed is fmtlog's format-string mode; see Format Strings for the workaround.

For the full picture of what gets sanitized where (across every transport), see Log Sanitization.