In Java, is there a way to write a string literal without having to escape quotes?

No, and I've always been annoyed by the lack of different string-literal syntaxes in Java.

Here's a trick I've used from time to time:

String myString = "using `backticks` instead of quotes".replace('`', '"');

I mainly only do something like that for a static field. Since it's static the string-replace code gets called once, upon initialization of the class. So the runtime performance penalty is practically nonexistent, and it makes the code considerably more legible.


The answer is no, and the proof resides in the Java Language Specification:

  StringLiteral:
   "StringCharacters"

  StringCharacters:
   StringCharacter
   | StringCharacters StringCharacter

  StringCharacter:
   InputCharacter but not " or \
   | EscapeSequence

As you can see a StringLiteral can just be bound by " and cannot contain special character without escapes..

A side note: you can embed Groovy inside your project, this will extend the syntax of Java allowing you to use '''multi line string ''', ' "string with single quotes" ' and also "string with ${variable}".


Update Dec. 2018 (12 months later):

Raw string literals (which are on the amber list) won't make it to JDK 12.
See the criticisms here.

There might be in a future version of Java (10 or more).

See JEPS 8196004 from January 2018: ("JEP" is the "JDK Enhancement Program")

JEP draft: Raw String Literals

Add a new kind of literal, a raw string literal, to the Java programming language.
Like the traditional string literal, a raw string literal produces a String, but does not interpret string escapes and can span multiple lines of source code.

So instead of:

Runtime.getRuntime().exec("\"C:\\Program Files\\foo\" bar");
String html = "<html>\n"
              "    <body>\n" +
              "         <p>Hello World.</p>\n" +
              "    </body>\n" +
              "</html>\n";
System.out.println("this".matches("\\w\\w\\w\\w"));

You would be able to type:

Runtime.getRuntime().exec(`"C:\Program Files\foo" bar"`);
    
String html = `<html>
                   <body>
                       <p>Hello World.</p>
                   </body>
               </html>
              `;

System.out.println("this".matches(`\w\w\w\w`));

Neat!

But it is still just a draft: it will need to posted, submitted, be a candidate, and funded, before being completed and making it into the next JDK.

Tags:

Java

String

Escaping

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