Question

I need to escape quotes from a string before printing them out.

I’ve written a function, using char arrays to be as explicit as possible. But all this function seems to do is print out its own input:

public static String escapeQuotes(String myString) {
 char[] quote=new char[]{'"'};
 char[] escapedQuote=new char[]{'\\' , '"'};
 return myString.replaceAll(new String(quote), new String(escapedQuote));
}

public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
 System.out.println("asd\"");
 System.out.println(escapeQuotes("asd\""));
}

I would expect the output of this to be:
asd”
asd\”

However what I get is:
asd”
asd”

Any ideas how to do this properly?

Thanks

Answer 1

I would try replace instead of replaceAll. The second version is designed for regex, AFAIK.

edit
From replaceAll docs
Note that backslashes (\) and dollar signs ($) in the replacement string may cause the results to be different than if it were being treated as a literal replacement string
So, backslash in second argument is being a problem.

The direct link to the docs
http://download.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/lang/String.html#replaceAll(java.lang.String, java.lang.String)