How to replace " \ " with " \\ " in java

java regex string backslash
David Prun picture David Prun · Sep 24, 2011 · Viewed 64.4k times · Source

I tried to break the string into arrays and replace \ with \\ , but couldn't do it, also I tried String.replaceAll something like this ("\","\\");.

I want to supply a path to JNI and it reads only in this way.

Answer

Jon Skeet picture Jon Skeet · Sep 24, 2011

Don't use String.replaceAll in this case - that's specified in terms of regular expressions, which means you'd need even more escaping. This should be fine:

String escaped = original.replace("\\", "\\\\");

Note that the backslashes are doubled due to being in Java string literals - so the actual strings involved here are "single backslash" and "double backslash" - not double and quadruple.

replace works on simple strings - no regexes involved.

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