How to escape double curly bracket in string.Format()

Question

I have already seen from other answers that to escape the { or } char in C# string.Format() you use {{ or }}.

But what I need to do is format a string that looks like this:

{{tag}}

However, when I try to escape the double curly braces like this:

string.Format("{{{0}}}", "tag");

or this:

string.Format("{{{{{0}}}}}", "tag");

The output is always this:

{tag}

A different way I have found that works is:

StringBuilder output = new StringBuilder();

output.Append("{{");
output.Append("tag");
output.Append("}}");

But it seems silly to have to have all that just to format a string.

Am I missing something obvious?

Your second variant using 5 braces on each side works for me! `string.Format("{{{{{0}}}}}", "tag");` ==> `{{tag}}` — Olivier Jacot-Descombes, Mar 20 '14 at 22:38
Your second sample `string.Format("{{{{{0}}}}}", "tag");` works perfectly. — Dmitry, Mar 20 '14 at 22:38

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 20 '14 at 22:45

5

In order to do this you need 5 braces on either side of the expression

Console.WriteLine("{{{{{0}}}}}", "tag");

The break down is

answered Mar 20 '14 at 22:45

JaredPar

Seems I had it correct the first time, I'm not clear what my issue was. A rebuild of the solution seemed to help. Thanks everyone – Charles Wesley Mar 20 '14 at 23:16

score 2 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 30 '16 at 14:59

2

You can use code this way.

string.Format("{0}{1}{2}", "{{","tag","}}");

edited Jun 30 '16 at 14:59

Kalu Singh Rao

answered Mar 20 '14 at 22:46

Chalumeau

2 Answers2