5

I'm trying to escape \ and " in my string like this:

text.Replace("\\", "\\\\").Replace("\"", "\\\"");

But the result for text,

arash "moeen"

turns out as

arash \\\"moeen\\\"

How can I fix this?

Peter Mortensen
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arash moeen
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  • What is `text` at start? You are replacing \ with \\ and `"` with `\"`. – Soner Gönül Sep 30 '14 at 07:37
  • Why do you need to escape them? – zerkms Sep 30 '14 at 07:38
  • text = arash "moeen" – arash moeen Sep 30 '14 at 07:38
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    So you want your resulting text to turn out as: `arash \"moeen\"`? – Marlon Sep 30 '14 at 07:38
  • as they tend to break my json string when I parse it. – arash moeen Sep 30 '14 at 07:39
  • @Marlon yes, exactly that what I want my result to be. – arash moeen Sep 30 '14 at 07:39
  • @arashmoeen have you considered using any well known json serializer? I understand in some cases you may want light weight solution, and hence a simple hackish (not necessarily bad) solution.. but only if you are sure you want your own solution. – Vikas Gupta Sep 30 '14 at 07:45
  • @VikasGupta that's true, I should be considering that as a correct solution anyway. I assume c# comes with a built in json serializer. – arash moeen Sep 30 '14 at 07:48
  • @arashmoeen .Net (not C#) does have couple built in that I know of.. `JavaScriptSerializer` and `DataContractJsonSerializer`. Given the original question has been posed as a string manipulation question, I am not sure how exactly you could utilize these classes.. but there they are for you reference.. Some other external libraries like Json.Net *may* have helper functions, which could potentially help with such escaping rather than full fledged serialization, should you need only escaping. – Vikas Gupta Sep 30 '14 at 07:57
  • The canonical is *[Can I escape a double quote in a verbatim string literal?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1928909/)*. This was the third hit in a search engine result and the second in another (probably because the title contains "C#" which the canonical questions don't). – Peter Mortensen Oct 07 '21 at 15:32

6 Answers6

6

Just use @ for verbatim literal strings.

text.Replace(@"this", @"that");

Example:

text.Replace(@"\", @"\\").Replace(@"""", @"\""");
B.K.
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3

What is your assignment's code?

It should be

var text = @"arash ""moeen""";
Nameless One
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3

If I understand correctly, first of all, text = arash "moeen" is not a valid regular string literal. I assume your string like;

string s = "text = arash \"moeen\"";

which is printed as 

text = arash "moeen" // I think this is your original string.

Since you arash \"moeen\" as a result, you just need to replace your " with \" in your string like;

string s = "text = arash \"moeen\"";
s = s.Replace("\"", "\\\"");

So your result will be arash \"moeen\"

More information: Escape Sequences

If this is a JSON string, my answer will be invalid :-p

Soner Gönül
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2
string text = @"arash ""moeen""";
MessageBox.Show(text.Replace(@"\", @"\\").Replace(@"""", @"\"""));
Alexey
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0

Suppose you have string like this

string test = "He said to me, \"Hello World\". How are you?";

The string has not changed in either case - there is a single escaped " in it. This is just a way to tell C# that the character is part of the string and not a string terminator.

Peter Mortensen
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vidy
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-2

When you want arash \"moeen\" from arash "moeen", do text.Replace(", \");.

Peter Mortensen
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Sybren
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