Question

I am loading data from a resource within my own application, and the escape characters I place are not being processed the way I expect them to be. For example, a line in my resource would look like this:

Ellington Human Sciences Building<>EHS<>Human Performance Sciences Building\nNeighbor to Ellington Human Sciences Annex (EHSA)<>292<>482<>73<>25<>Human Sciences
Ellington Human Sciences Annex<>EHSA<>Human Performance Sciences Building\nNeighbor to Ellington Human Sciences Building (EHS)<>340<>464<>28<>20<>Human Sciences

my file reader looks like so:

private synchronized void loadPOIs(Resources resource) throws IOException {
    if (mLoaded) return;

    InputStream inputStream = resource.openRawResource(R.raw.pois);
    BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(inputStream));

    try {
        String line;
        while((line = reader.readLine()) != null) {
            String[] strings = TextUtils.split(line, "<>");
            if (strings.length < 7) continue;
            POI poi = addPOI(strings[0], strings[1], strings[2], strings[3], strings[4], strings[5], strings[6]);
            if (strings.length == 8) {
                final int len = strings[7].length();
                for (int i = 0; i < len; i++) {
                    final String prefix = strings[7].substring(0, len - i);
                    addMatch(prefix, poi);
                }
            }
        }
    } finally {
        reader.close();
    }
    mLoaded = true;     
}

strings[2] would be the line holding the information about the Point of Interest, and they contain the “\n” character. When I call poi.getInfo() (the getter method of retrieving the info, returns a String) the output allows the “\n” to persist.

any ideas?

Answer 1

You are reading text from a file, and ‘\n’ is just as valid text as any other and does not have any special connotation within a text file. If you want a newline instead, then write a newline in your txt file. It’s sure easier than performing scaping over text, and you control the source of the data so there should be no trouble in modifying it.