Print escaped representation of a String

Question

How do I print the escaped representation of a string, for example if I have:

s = "String:\tA"

I wish to output:

String:\tA

on the screen instead of

String:    A

The internal representation has a tab character. It doesn't have a backslash and a t. What *exactly* are you trying to do? — Jon Skeet, Dec 04 '12 at 11:18
@Jon Skeet Say I get a string from somewhere. I want to know exactly what it contains. I want to see "String:\tA" rather than "String: A" — Baz, Dec 04 '12 at 11:26
@Baz: Sure. But I just want to make sure that you understand that "\t" is just the Java source code representation. Your question talks about the "internal representation" - it's just a tab character. — Jon Skeet, Dec 04 '12 at 11:28
Does this answer your question? [How do I print escape characters in Java?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7888004/how-do-i-print-escape-characters-in-java) — M. Justin, Sep 14 '21 at 15:25

score 9 · Accepted Answer · edited Dec 14 '17 at 20:13

9

I think you are looking for:

String xy = org.apache.commons.lang.StringEscapeUtils.escapeJava(yourString);
System.out.println(xy);

deprecated in Apache Commons Lang v3.5+, use Apache Commons Text v1.2

edited Dec 14 '17 at 20:13

howlger

answered Dec 04 '12 at 11:20

jlordo

This is an old Q&A but its very useful especially for test generation. The updated link is https://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-lang/ and the package is now commons.lang3.... , that is use: org.apache.commons.lang3.StringEscapeUtils.escapeJava(yourString); – ArtisanV Jul 14 '16 at 18:24

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 04 '12 at 11:22

3

For a given String you'll have to replace the control characters (like tab):

System.out.println("String:\tA\n".replace("\t", "\\t").replace("\n","\\n");

(and for the others too)

answered Dec 04 '12 at 11:22

Andreas Dolk

Dunes · Answer 3 · 2015-07-14T10:57:25.893

3

Well strictly speaking the internal representation is an unsigned 16-bit integer. I think what you mean is that you want to escape the string.

There's a class called StringEscapeUtils in the Apache library to help with that.

String escaped = StringEscapeUtils.escapeJava("\t");
System.out.println(escaped); // prints \t

edited Jul 14 '15 at 10:57

answered Dec 04 '12 at 11:24

Dunes

1

Fixed the link. For future reference, googling "StringEscapeUtils apache" will easily find the documentation. – Dunes Jul 14 '15 at 10:58

3 Answers3