How do I escape a semicolon inside of a String?

Question

I need to initialize complex javascript code as an string. But that javascript code contains semicolon and " mark. I know I can escape " mark using \". But I don't know how to escape semicolon.

<script type="text/javascript"><!--
google_ad_client = "8888888888888";
/* Error Page Ads */
google_ad_slot = "8888888";
google_ad_width = 336;
google_ad_height = 280;
//-->
</script>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
</script>

I need to initialize above code as,

String complexString = "Above code here";

I can't concatenate slices of code, because that way ; will be removed. Right?

This is for Servlet. I may be foolish, but pardon me.

Semicolons in string literals are meaningless...What are you getting at here? — lc., Oct 08 '12 at 17:25
What problem are you getting.. Semi-colon will not trouble you.. Get going.. — Rohit Jain, Oct 08 '12 at 17:25
Are you getting an error message or seeing the code getting cut off somewhere? — Erick Robertson, Oct 08 '12 at 17:40
Oh, I thought java mix up with semicolon that ends an statement. As long as semicolon inside "" marks it not trouble. Thanks for clearing that out. — Isuru Madusanka, Oct 08 '12 at 18:12
I don't understand why this question is non-constructive. It's a valid question. Just because it's misguided or has an obvious (to most of us) answer, doesn't mean it's non-constructive. — Erick Robertson, Oct 09 '12 at 15:16
For everyone that is questioning the motives, if you try to export data into a CSV that is going to be separed by semicolon, if they are unescaped it will break the file. — sebastianf182, Oct 04 '19 at 13:52

score 4 · Answer 1 · edited Oct 08 '12 at 17:25

4

As long as the ; is inside your double quotes you shouldn't need to escape it.

edited Oct 08 '12 at 17:25

Baz

36,440
11
68
94

answered Oct 08 '12 at 17:25

Jordan Denison

2,649
14
14

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 08 '12 at 17:25

3

Semicolons are not special characters. There's no need of escaping them when they're in a String. You can always test a string's behavior by using the little old System.out.println() method.

answered Oct 08 '12 at 17:25

Fritz

9,987
4
30
49

score 3 · Answer 3 · edited May 09 '22 at 23:47

3

You don't need to escape your ; when they are inside " or ', as they are literals and are perfectly safe.

edited May 09 '22 at 23:47

Zach Jensz

3,650
5
15
30

answered Oct 08 '12 at 17:25

Praveen Kumar Purushothaman

164,888
24
203
252

I am not going to downvote, but semicolons and commas are commonly used in CSV exports and will break the file if unescaped. That is a good reason to escape them. – sebastianf182 Oct 04 '19 at 13:53
@sfratini Thanks, I'll try amending the answer. Happy to take in advice. – Praveen Kumar Purushothaman Oct 05 '19 at 02:25

Matthew Kirkley · Accepted Answer · 2012-10-08T18:22:17.577

1

I think what you really want to do is escape the quote characters in your javascript not your semicolon characters.

So ultimately you would want

String complexString = "<script type=\"text/javascript\"><!--
google_ad_client = \"8888888888888\";
/* Error Page Ads */
google_ad_slot = \"8888888\";
google_ad_width = 336;
google_ad_height = 280;
//-->
</script>  
<script type=\"text/javascript\"
src=\"http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js\">  
</script>"

edited Oct 08 '12 at 18:22

answered Oct 08 '12 at 17:32

Matthew Kirkley

4,138
5
31
33

[related](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/236073/why-split-the-script-tag-when-writing-it-with-document-write) – jbabey Oct 08 '12 at 17:40

How do I escape a semicolon inside of a String?

4 Answers4