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I am using Java for a while and come up with this problem: I use hard-coded paths in windows like 

"D:\Java-code\JavaProjects\workspace\eypros\src"

The problem is that I need to escape the backslash character in order to use it with string. So I manually escape each backslash:

"D:\\Java-code\\JavaProjects\\workspace\\eypros\\src"

Is there a way to automatically take the unescaped path and return an escaped java string.

I am thinking that maybe another container besides java string could do the trick (but I don't know any).

Any suggestions?

Not a bug
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Eypros
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    Are there any downsides to just using forward-slashes? – user432 Apr 29 '14 at 11:23
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    What do you mean by "take" the unescaped path? This is just in source code, after all - if you have user input, you won't need to escape it. – Jon Skeet Apr 29 '14 at 11:23
  • [Andrei's answer](http://stackoverflow.com/a/23363356/2187042) regarding `System.getProperty("file.separator");` deals with a lot of the system dependant problems you're going to suffer if you go down this path (but not all). Is there a particular reason you want to lock your program to windows? Personally I would put all your user files within their home directory, which you can get the directory of without any system specific code – Richard Tingle Apr 29 '14 at 11:30
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    JAVA accepts forward slash `/` as cross platform file separator. So, it is safe to use on `Windows` platform too. – Ravinder Reddy Apr 29 '14 at 11:31

1 Answers1

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public static String escapePath(String path)
{
    return path.replace("\\", "\\\\");
}

The \ is doubled since it must be escaped in those strings also.

Anyway, I think you should use System.getProperty("file.separator"); instead of \.

Also the java.io.File has a few methods useful for file-system paths.

Hans Passant
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Andrei
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  • This code will work fine. But is this code really needed? You need to escape the back-slashes only when you are hardcoding the path. And if you are hardcoding, then anyways you need to manually encode the "\"... – Hirak Apr 29 '14 at 11:36
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    I don't know the use-case of the user. Maybe he is reading those paths from a file that a client can modify. – Andrei Apr 29 '14 at 11:41
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    By the way, if you use replaceAll instead of replace, it will give you an error. Check the reason and solution (replaceAll("\\\\", "\\\\\\\\")) [here][link]: [link][https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1701839/string-replaceall-single-backslashes-with-double-backslashes] – Mashrur Jul 05 '17 at 07:03