Question

When I have a string such as:

String x = "hello\nworld";

How do I get Java to print the actual escape character (and not interpret it as an escape character) when using System.out?

For example, when calling

System.out.print(x);

I would like to see:

hello\nworld

And not:

hello
world

I would like to see the actual escape characters for debugging purposes.

Answer 1

One way to do this is:

public static String unEscapeString(String s){
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    for (int i=0; i<s.length(); i++)
        switch (s.charAt(i)){
            case '\n': sb.append("\\n"); break;
            case '\t': sb.append("\\t"); break;
            // ... rest of escape characters
            default: sb.append(s.charAt(i));
        }
    return sb.toString();
}

and you run System.out.print(unEscapeString(x)).