Java: Ignore escape sequences

java escaping backslash ascii-art
trichner picture trichner · Apr 7, 2012 · Viewed 8.2k times · Source

For my command-line-interfaces it's often nice to have a little ASCII art in the beginning, but those often contain many backslashes.

for example:

System.out.println("  _____ _______       _____ _  __ ");
System.out.println(" / ____|__   __|/\   / ____| |/ / ");
System.out.println("| (___    | |  /  \ | |    | ' /  ");
System.out.println(" \___ \   | | / /\ \| |    |  <   ");
System.out.println(" ____) |  | |/ ____ \ |____| . \  ");
System.out.println("|_____/   |_/_/    \_\_____|_|\_\ ");

But since every '\' needs to be a '\\' this often looks very ugly in code and it's very hard to find/fix an error in the 'font'. Is there a way to tell Java NOT to use escape sequences?

Answer

Jon Skeet picture Jon Skeet · Apr 7, 2012

No, Java doesn't have anything like the "verbatim string literals" of C#. If you want to do ASCII art, consider putting it into a text file instead and loading that from the code.

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