Question

i read several property files to compare them against a template file for missing keys.

FileInputStream compareFis = new FileInputStream(compareFile);
Properties compareProperties = new Properties();
compareProperties.load(compareFis);

Note: I read the template file the same way.

After reading i compare them and write the missing keys with their values from the template file into a Set.

CompareResult result = new CompareResult(Main.resultDir);
[...]
if (!compareProperties.containsKey(key)) {
    retVal = true;
    result.add(compareFile.getName(), key + "=" + entry.getValue());
}

At last i write the missing keys and their values into a new file.

for (Entry<String, SortedSet<String>> entry : resultSet) {
    PrintWriter out = null;
    try {
        out = new java.io.PrintWriter(resultFile);
        SortedSet<String> values = entry.getValue();
        for (String string : values) {
            out.println(string);
        }
    } catch (FileNotFoundException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    } finally {
        out.flush();
        out.close();
    }
}

If i open the result file i see that all line breaks “\n” from the values of the template file are replaced against a new line. Example:

test.key=Hello\nWorld!

becomes

test.key=Hello
World!

Although this is basically correct, but in my case I have to keep the “\n”.

Does anyone know how can i avoid that?

Answer 1

Since it seems that your output is a properties file, you should use Properties.store() to generate the output file. This would not only take care of encoding the newline chars, but also the other special characters (non ISO8859-1 characters for example).