How to define special characters in string array java

Question

I need to define an array containing below all special characters..

+ - && || ! ( ) { } [ ] ^ " ~ * ? : \

I am using this

List<String> specialCharactersInSolr = Arrays.asList(new String[] {
                "+", "-", "&&", "||", "!", "(", ")", "{", "}", "[", "]", "^",
                "~", "*", "?", ":", });

It is accepting all the character except " and \

Please help how to define these two as well.

just escape them with a backslash! And why are you not using Character instead of String? — jlordo
– jlordo, Commented Jul 12, 2013 at 10:25
Use "\"" and "\\" respectively. But you say you want characters here and define strings instead? — fge
– fge, Commented Jul 12, 2013 at 10:26
@jlordo. Probably because he also needs to store - && and ||. — Rohit Jain
– Rohit Jain, Commented Jul 12, 2013 at 10:26

Pshemo · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-09 13:19:01Z

10

\ and " are special characters in String class

" is start or end of String
\ is used to create some characters like new lines \n \r tab\t or to escape special characters like in your case \ and "

So to make them literals you will have to escape them with "\\" and "\""

Other idea is to use Character[] instead of String[] so you wont have to escape " and yours characters can be written as '"' or '\\' (because ' require escaping - it should be written as '\'' - \ is also special here and will also require escaping to produce its literal).

edited Apr 9, 2014 at 13:19

answered Jul 12, 2013 at 10:27

Pshemo

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7 Comments

Rohit Jain Over a year ago

And in turn escape the backslashes as well.

Bohemian Over a year ago

@RohitJain this ain't regex. double backslash is how you write a single backslash

Ruchira Gayan Ranaweera Over a year ago

@RohitJain you are mistaken this will work fine.Try it your self

Rohit Jain Over a year ago

@Bohemian. Ah! right. Mixed it up with regex. Sorry. It'll work fine.

Tanu Garg Over a year ago

Ya i m not so active. But now i am trying to accept it. But it is not click able.

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Bohemian · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-12 10:32:00Z

4

Use this

List<String> specialCharactersInSolr = Arrays.asList(new String[]{
            "+", "-", "&&", "||", "!", "(", ")", "{", "}", "[", "]", "^",
            "~", "*", "?", ":","\"","\\"});

here "\"" and "\\" are for " and \

edited Jul 12, 2013 at 10:32

Bohemian♦

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answered Jul 12, 2013 at 10:26

Ruchira Gayan Ranaweera

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2 Comments

Rohit Jain Over a year ago

Won't work. You need to escape the backslashes as well. This has to be done in Java.

Bohemian Over a year ago

@RohitJain wrong. this above code is fine. you thinking of how to write a literal backslash in regex maybe

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