title: Does Java have support for multiline strings?
body: <p>Coming from Perl, I sure am missing the "here-document" means of creating a multi-line string in source code:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$string = &lt;&lt;"EOF"  # create a three-line string
  text
  text
  text
  EOF
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>In Java, I have to have cumbersome quotes and plus signs on every line as I concatenate my multiline string from scratch.</p>
  
  <p>What are some better alternatives?  Define my string in a properties file?</p>
  
  <p><strong>Edit</strong>: Two answers say StringBuilder.append() is preferable to the plus notation.  Could anyone elaborate as to why they think so?  It doesn't look more preferable to me at all.  I'm looking for a way around the fact that multiline strings are not a first-class language construct, which means I definitely don't want to replace a first-class language construct (string concatenation with plus) with method calls.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Edit</strong>: To clarify my question further, I'm not concerned about performance at all.  I'm concerned about maintainability and design issues.</p>