Question

I know both NetBeans and Eclipse has options where if you paste multi-line, un-escaped string into a string variable, it will automatically add escape characters and add line breaks in. Is there a way to reverse the process?

For example:

function ShowHideOptions(trigger, element) {
 if( trigger ) {
    document.getElementById( element ).style.display = "";
 } else {
    document.getElementById( element ).style.display = "none";
 }
}

if pasted in to string becomes:

private static final String LABEL_JAVASCRIPT = "function ShowHideOptions(trigger, element) {\n"
            + " if( trigger ) {\n"
            + "     document.getElementById( element ).style.display = \"\";\n"
            + " } else {\n"
            + "     document.getElementById( element ).style.display = \"none\";\n"
            + " }\n"
            + "}";

I want reverse this process.

Answer 1

I believe your question warrants another question. Why?

If you reverse this, the quotes would not be escaped and therefore you would get errors. Example:

System.out.println("System.out.println("Test");");
                                       ^
                          Error, everything after this quote is
                                    considered code

Notice the quotes aren’t escaped. This code would generate an error where I marked it because the quotes apparently mean the string should end.

Also, if the newlines are reversed, this example:

System.out.println("test");
System.out.println("test2");

Would become:

System.out.println("test");System.out.println("test2");

The following code works fine. Please clarify the problem.

System.out.println(LABEL_JAVASCRIPT);