Common Escape Sequences

Inside of a string literal, there are some characters that cannot be written normally.

An easy example is double quotes. You can't write double quotes in the middle of a string literal because Java will think the extra quote is the end of the String.

void main() {
String title = "The "Honorable" Judge Judy";
}

In order to make it work, the "s need to be "escaped" with a backslash.

void main() {
String title = "The \"Honorable\" Judge Judy";
}

Since the backslash is used to escape characters, it too needs to escaped in order to have it be in a String. So to encode ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ into a String you need to escape the first backslash.1

void main() {
// The backslash needs to be escaped. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
String shruggie = "¯\\_(ツ)_/¯";
}

And much the same as with char, you need to use \n to write in a newline.

void main() {
String letter = "To Whom It May Concern,\n\nI am writing this letter to complain.";
}

  1. We call \ a "backslash" and / a "forward slash." In ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ the left arm is drawn using the backslash and the right arm with a forward slash. What makes left "backwards" and right "forwards" is just social norms. ↩