Escaping double quotes in JavaScript onClick event handler

It needs to be HTML-escaped, not Javascript-escaped. Change \" to "

Did you try

" or \x22

instead of

\"

?

While I agree with CMS about doing this in an unobtrusive manner (via a lib like jquery or dojo), here's what also work:

<script type="text/javascript">
function parse(a, b, c) {
    alert(c);
  }

</script>

<a href="#x" onclick="parse('#', false, 'xyc&quot;foo');return false;">Test</a>

The reason it barfs is not because of JavaScript, it's because of the HTML parser. It has no concept of escaped quotes to it trundles along looking for the end quote and finds it and returns that as the onclick function. This is invalid javascript though so you don't find about the error until JavaScript tries to execute the function..