CODEWITHSUNDEEP
java
Jeremy T
Jeremy T

Reputation: 49

Java: Purpose of double \\ characters?

command = command.replaceAll("\\{player}", e.getPlayer().getName());

What is the purpose of the "\\" in "\\{player}" within that line?

Why doesn't the programmer just do "{player}" ?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 80

Answers (3)

Hai Le
Hai Le

Reputation: 25

Backslash are usually to "escape" characters. Characters that usually can be used for regex. In this case, the {} can be interpreted as regex (which you can utilize for string manipulations), hence why you'd have to escape them for your {} to be interpreted as a literal brackets instead of reg ex.

Upvotes: 2

reabr
reabr

Reputation: 51

"\ with some other characters have special meanings. For example, \n moves to next line \t writes "tab" character and so on. Because of this, if you really want to write \ in your code like, "c:\someFolder\someFile" you should use "C:\\someFolder\\someFile" \ called escape character If you write 

String text ="firstname\lastname";

compiler gives you an error "illegal escape character" It means that you should not use"\" alone in your code. Happy coding!

Upvotes: 1

Mureinik
Mureinik

Reputation: 311103

That's an escape sequence. Since the { character has a special meaning in a regex, it needs to be escaped to signify you actually meant the literal {.

Upvotes: 6

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