Question

What would be a Java 1.4.2 equivalent of Pattern.quote?

I was using Pattern.quote() on a URI but now need to make it 1.4.2 compatible.

Answer 1

Well the source code of Pattern.quote is available and looks like this:

public static String quote(String s) {
    int slashEIndex = s.indexOf("\\E");
    if (slashEIndex == -1)
        return "\\Q" + s + "\\E";

    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(s.length() * 2);
    sb.append("\\Q");
    slashEIndex = 0;
    int current = 0;
    while ((slashEIndex = s.indexOf("\\E", current)) != -1) {
        sb.append(s.substring(current, slashEIndex));
        current = slashEIndex + 2;
        sb.append("\\E\\\\E\\Q");
    }
    sb.append(s.substring(current, s.length()));
    sb.append("\\E");
    return sb.toString();
}

Basically it relies on

\Q  Nothing, but quotes all characters until \E
\E  Nothing, but ends quoting started by \Q

and has a special treatement of the case in which \E is present in the string.