How to unescape a Java string literal in Java?
Solution 1:
The Problem
The org.apache.commons.lang.StringEscapeUtils.unescapeJava() given here as another answer is really very little help at all.
- It forgets about
\0for null. - It doesn’t handle octal at all.
- It can’t handle the sorts of escapes admitted by the
java.util.regex.Pattern.compile()and everything that uses it, including\a,\e, and especially\cX. - It has no support for logical Unicode code points by number, only for UTF-16.
- This looks like UCS-2 code, not UTF-16 code: they use the depreciated
charAtinterface instead of thecodePointinterface, thus promulgating the delusion that a Javacharis guaranteed to hold a Unicode character. It’s not. They only get away with this because no UTF-16 surrogate will wind up looking for anything they’re looking for.
The Solution
I wrote a string unescaper which solves the OP’s question without all the irritations of the Apache code.
/*
*
* unescape_perl_string()
*
* Tom Christiansen <[email protected]>
* Sun Nov 28 12:55:24 MST 2010
*
* It's completely ridiculous that there's no standard
* unescape_java_string function. Since I have to do the
* damn thing myself, I might as well make it halfway useful
* by supporting things Java was too stupid to consider in
* strings:
*
* => "?" items are additions to Java string escapes
* but normal in Java regexes
*
* => "!" items are also additions to Java regex escapes
*
* Standard singletons: ?\a ?\e \f \n \r \t
*
* NB: \b is unsupported as backspace so it can pass-through
* to the regex translator untouched; I refuse to make anyone
* doublebackslash it as doublebackslashing is a Java idiocy
* I desperately wish would die out. There are plenty of
* other ways to write it:
*
* \cH, \12, \012, \x08 \x{8}, \u0008, \U00000008
*
* Octal escapes: \0 \0N \0NN \N \NN \NNN
* Can range up to !\777 not \377
*
* TODO: add !\o{NNNNN}
* last Unicode is 4177777
* maxint is 37777777777
*
* Control chars: ?\cX
* Means: ord(X) ^ ord('@')
*
* Old hex escapes: \xXX
* unbraced must be 2 xdigits
*
* Perl hex escapes: !\x{XXX} braced may be 1-8 xdigits
* NB: proper Unicode never needs more than 6, as highest
* valid codepoint is 0x10FFFF, not maxint 0xFFFFFFFF
*
* Lame Java escape: \[IDIOT JAVA PREPROCESSOR]uXXXX must be
* exactly 4 xdigits;
*
* I can't write XXXX in this comment where it belongs
* because the damned Java Preprocessor can't mind its
* own business. Idiots!
*
* Lame Python escape: !\UXXXXXXXX must be exactly 8 xdigits
*
* TODO: Perl translation escapes: \Q \U \L \E \[IDIOT JAVA PREPROCESSOR]u \l
* These are not so important to cover if you're passing the
* result to Pattern.compile(), since it handles them for you
* further downstream. Hm, what about \[IDIOT JAVA PREPROCESSOR]u?
*
*/
public final static
String unescape_perl_string(String oldstr) {
/*
* In contrast to fixing Java's broken regex charclasses,
* this one need be no bigger, as unescaping shrinks the string
* here, where in the other one, it grows it.
*/
StringBuffer newstr = new StringBuffer(oldstr.length());
boolean saw_backslash = false;
for (int i = 0; i < oldstr.length(); i++) {
int cp = oldstr.codePointAt(i);
if (oldstr.codePointAt(i) > Character.MAX_VALUE) {
i++; /****WE HATES UTF-16! WE HATES IT FOREVERSES!!!****/
}
if (!saw_backslash) {
if (cp == '\\') {
saw_backslash = true;
} else {
newstr.append(Character.toChars(cp));
}
continue; /* switch */
}
if (cp == '\\') {
saw_backslash = false;
newstr.append('\\');
newstr.append('\\');
continue; /* switch */
}
switch (cp) {
case 'r': newstr.append('\r');
break; /* switch */
case 'n': newstr.append('\n');
break; /* switch */
case 'f': newstr.append('\f');
break; /* switch */
/* PASS a \b THROUGH!! */
case 'b': newstr.append("\\b");
break; /* switch */
case 't': newstr.append('\t');
break; /* switch */
case 'a': newstr.append('\007');
break; /* switch */
case 'e': newstr.append('\033');
break; /* switch */
/*
* A "control" character is what you get when you xor its
* codepoint with '@'==64. This only makes sense for ASCII,
* and may not yield a "control" character after all.
*
* Strange but true: "\c{" is ";", "\c}" is "=", etc.
*/
case 'c': {
if (++i == oldstr.length()) { die("trailing \\c"); }
cp = oldstr.codePointAt(i);
/*
* don't need to grok surrogates, as next line blows them up
*/
if (cp > 0x7f) { die("expected ASCII after \\c"); }
newstr.append(Character.toChars(cp ^ 64));
break; /* switch */
}
case '8':
case '9': die("illegal octal digit");
/* NOTREACHED */
/*
* may be 0 to 2 octal digits following this one
* so back up one for fallthrough to next case;
* unread this digit and fall through to next case.
*/
case '1':
case '2':
case '3':
case '4':
case '5':
case '6':
case '7': --i;
/* FALLTHROUGH */
/*
* Can have 0, 1, or 2 octal digits following a 0
* this permits larger values than octal 377, up to
* octal 777.
*/
case '0': {
if (i+1 == oldstr.length()) {
/* found \0 at end of string */
newstr.append(Character.toChars(0));
break; /* switch */
}
i++;
int digits = 0;
int j;
for (j = 0; j <= 2; j++) {
if (i+j == oldstr.length()) {
break; /* for */
}
/* safe because will unread surrogate */
int ch = oldstr.charAt(i+j);
if (ch < '0' || ch > '7') {
break; /* for */
}
digits++;
}
if (digits == 0) {
--i;
newstr.append('\0');
break; /* switch */
}
int value = 0;
try {
value = Integer.parseInt(
oldstr.substring(i, i+digits), 8);
} catch (NumberFormatException nfe) {
die("invalid octal value for \\0 escape");
}
newstr.append(Character.toChars(value));
i += digits-1;
break; /* switch */
} /* end case '0' */
case 'x': {
if (i+2 > oldstr.length()) {
die("string too short for \\x escape");
}
i++;
boolean saw_brace = false;
if (oldstr.charAt(i) == '{') {
/* ^^^^^^ ok to ignore surrogates here */
i++;
saw_brace = true;
}
int j;
for (j = 0; j < 8; j++) {
if (!saw_brace && j == 2) {
break; /* for */
}
/*
* ASCII test also catches surrogates
*/
int ch = oldstr.charAt(i+j);
if (ch > 127) {
die("illegal non-ASCII hex digit in \\x escape");
}
if (saw_brace && ch == '}') { break; /* for */ }
if (! ( (ch >= '0' && ch <= '9')
||
(ch >= 'a' && ch <= 'f')
||
(ch >= 'A' && ch <= 'F')
)
)
{
die(String.format(
"illegal hex digit #%d '%c' in \\x", ch, ch));
}
}
if (j == 0) { die("empty braces in \\x{} escape"); }
int value = 0;
try {
value = Integer.parseInt(oldstr.substring(i, i+j), 16);
} catch (NumberFormatException nfe) {
die("invalid hex value for \\x escape");
}
newstr.append(Character.toChars(value));
if (saw_brace) { j++; }
i += j-1;
break; /* switch */
}
case 'u': {
if (i+4 > oldstr.length()) {
die("string too short for \\u escape");
}
i++;
int j;
for (j = 0; j < 4; j++) {
/* this also handles the surrogate issue */
if (oldstr.charAt(i+j) > 127) {
die("illegal non-ASCII hex digit in \\u escape");
}
}
int value = 0;
try {
value = Integer.parseInt( oldstr.substring(i, i+j), 16);
} catch (NumberFormatException nfe) {
die("invalid hex value for \\u escape");
}
newstr.append(Character.toChars(value));
i += j-1;
break; /* switch */
}
case 'U': {
if (i+8 > oldstr.length()) {
die("string too short for \\U escape");
}
i++;
int j;
for (j = 0; j < 8; j++) {
/* this also handles the surrogate issue */
if (oldstr.charAt(i+j) > 127) {
die("illegal non-ASCII hex digit in \\U escape");
}
}
int value = 0;
try {
value = Integer.parseInt(oldstr.substring(i, i+j), 16);
} catch (NumberFormatException nfe) {
die("invalid hex value for \\U escape");
}
newstr.append(Character.toChars(value));
i += j-1;
break; /* switch */
}
default: newstr.append('\\');
newstr.append(Character.toChars(cp));
/*
* say(String.format(
* "DEFAULT unrecognized escape %c passed through",
* cp));
*/
break; /* switch */
}
saw_backslash = false;
}
/* weird to leave one at the end */
if (saw_backslash) {
newstr.append('\\');
}
return newstr.toString();
}
/*
* Return a string "U+XX.XXX.XXXX" etc, where each XX set is the
* xdigits of the logical Unicode code point. No bloody brain-damaged
* UTF-16 surrogate crap, just true logical characters.
*/
public final static
String uniplus(String s) {
if (s.length() == 0) {
return "";
}
/* This is just the minimum; sb will grow as needed. */
StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer(2 + 3 * s.length());
sb.append("U+");
for (int i = 0; i < s.length(); i++) {
sb.append(String.format("%X", s.codePointAt(i)));
if (s.codePointAt(i) > Character.MAX_VALUE) {
i++; /****WE HATES UTF-16! WE HATES IT FOREVERSES!!!****/
}
if (i+1 < s.length()) {
sb.append(".");
}
}
return sb.toString();
}
private static final
void die(String foa) {
throw new IllegalArgumentException(foa);
}
private static final
void say(String what) {
System.out.println(what);
}
If it helps others, you’re welcome to it — no strings attached. If you improve it, I’d love for you to mail me your enhancements, but you certainly don’t have to.
Solution 2:
You can use String unescapeJava(String) method of StringEscapeUtils from Apache Commons Lang.
Here's an example snippet:
String in = "a\\tb\\n\\\"c\\\"";
System.out.println(in);
// a\tb\n\"c\"
String out = StringEscapeUtils.unescapeJava(in);
System.out.println(out);
// a b
// "c"
The utility class has methods to escapes and unescape strings for Java, Java Script, HTML, XML, and SQL. It also has overloads that writes directly to a java.io.Writer.
Caveats
It looks like StringEscapeUtils handles Unicode escapes with one u, but not octal escapes, or Unicode escapes with extraneous us.
/* Unicode escape test #1: PASS */
System.out.println(
"\u0030"
); // 0
System.out.println(
StringEscapeUtils.unescapeJava("\\u0030")
); // 0
System.out.println(
"\u0030".equals(StringEscapeUtils.unescapeJava("\\u0030"))
); // true
/* Octal escape test: FAIL */
System.out.println(
"\45"
); // %
System.out.println(
StringEscapeUtils.unescapeJava("\\45")
); // 45
System.out.println(
"\45".equals(StringEscapeUtils.unescapeJava("\\45"))
); // false
/* Unicode escape test #2: FAIL */
System.out.println(
"\uu0030"
); // 0
System.out.println(
StringEscapeUtils.unescapeJava("\\uu0030")
); // throws NestableRuntimeException:
// Unable to parse unicode value: u003
A quote from the JLS:
Octal escapes are provided for compatibility with C, but can express only Unicode values
\u0000through\u00FF, so Unicode escapes are usually preferred.
If your string can contain octal escapes, you may want to convert them to Unicode escapes first, or use another approach.
The extraneous u is also documented as follows:
The Java programming language specifies a standard way of transforming a program written in Unicode into ASCII that changes a program into a form that can be processed by ASCII-based tools. The transformation involves converting any Unicode escapes in the source text of the program to ASCII by adding an extra
u-for example,\uxxxxbecomes\uuxxxx-while simultaneously converting non-ASCII characters in the source text to Unicode escapes containing a single u each.This transformed version is equally acceptable to a compiler for the Java programming language and represents the exact same program. The exact Unicode source can later be restored from this ASCII form by converting each escape sequence where multiple
u's are present to a sequence of Unicode characters with one feweru, while simultaneously converting each escape sequence with a singleuto the corresponding single Unicode character.
If your string can contain Unicode escapes with extraneous u, then you may also need to preprocess this before using StringEscapeUtils.
Alternatively you can try to write your own Java string literal unescaper from scratch, making sure to follow the exact JLS specifications.
References
- JLS 3.3 Unicode Escapes
- JLS 3.10.6 Escape Sequences for Character and String Literals
Solution 3:
Came across a similar problem, wasn't also satisfied with the presented solutions and implemented this one myself.
Also available as a Gist on Github:
/**
* Unescapes a string that contains standard Java escape sequences.
* <ul>
* <li><strong>\b \f \n \r \t \" \'</strong> :
* BS, FF, NL, CR, TAB, double and single quote.</li>
* <li><strong>\X \XX \XXX</strong> : Octal character
* specification (0 - 377, 0x00 - 0xFF).</li>
* <li><strong>\uXXXX</strong> : Hexadecimal based Unicode character.</li>
* </ul>
*
* @param st
* A string optionally containing standard java escape sequences.
* @return The translated string.
*/
public String unescapeJavaString(String st) {
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(st.length());
for (int i = 0; i < st.length(); i++) {
char ch = st.charAt(i);
if (ch == '\\') {
char nextChar = (i == st.length() - 1) ? '\\' : st
.charAt(i + 1);
// Octal escape?
if (nextChar >= '0' && nextChar <= '7') {
String code = "" + nextChar;
i++;
if ((i < st.length() - 1) && st.charAt(i + 1) >= '0'
&& st.charAt(i + 1) <= '7') {
code += st.charAt(i + 1);
i++;
if ((i < st.length() - 1) && st.charAt(i + 1) >= '0'
&& st.charAt(i + 1) <= '7') {
code += st.charAt(i + 1);
i++;
}
}
sb.append((char) Integer.parseInt(code, 8));
continue;
}
switch (nextChar) {
case '\\':
ch = '\\';
break;
case 'b':
ch = '\b';
break;
case 'f':
ch = '\f';
break;
case 'n':
ch = '\n';
break;
case 'r':
ch = '\r';
break;
case 't':
ch = '\t';
break;
case '\"':
ch = '\"';
break;
case '\'':
ch = '\'';
break;
// Hex Unicode: u????
case 'u':
if (i >= st.length() - 5) {
ch = 'u';
break;
}
int code = Integer.parseInt(
"" + st.charAt(i + 2) + st.charAt(i + 3)
+ st.charAt(i + 4) + st.charAt(i + 5), 16);
sb.append(Character.toChars(code));
i += 5;
continue;
}
i++;
}
sb.append(ch);
}
return sb.toString();
}
Solution 4:
See this from http://commons.apache.org/lang/:
StringEscapeUtils
StringEscapeUtils.unescapeJava(String str)
Solution 5:
I know this question was old, but I wanted a solution that doesn't involve libraries outside those included JRE6 (i.e. Apache Commons is not acceptable), and I came up with a simple solution using the built-in java.io.StreamTokenizer:
import java.io.*;
// ...
String literal = "\"Has \\\"\\\\\\\t\\\" & isn\\\'t \\\r\\\n on 1 line.\"";
StreamTokenizer parser = new StreamTokenizer(new StringReader(literal));
String result;
try {
parser.nextToken();
if (parser.ttype == '"') {
result = parser.sval;
}
else {
result = "ERROR!";
}
}
catch (IOException e) {
result = e.toString();
}
System.out.println(result);
Output:
Has "\ " & isn't
on 1 line.