String Escaper & Utilities

Java / .Net Escape / Unescape

Escapes or unescapes a Java or .Net string, replacing characters that could prevent compiling with their escape sequences.

Copy-paste the Java or .Net string to escape or unescape here

Escape non-ASCII characters as \uXXXX(é → \u00E9) Also escape single quotes(' → \')

Ctrl + Enter

Java and .Net string escaping explained

Why escape?

A string literal in Java, C#, VB.Net or Kotlin is delimited by double quotes. A literal double quote, a backslash or a line break inside the value would end the literal early or confuse the compiler, so those characters are written as escape sequences, a backslash followed by a letter or a code. This tool turns raw text into something you can paste between quotes in your source code, and turns an escaped literal back into readable text.

Rules applied by this tool

Character	Escaped as	Notes
Backspace (U+0008)	`\b`
Newline (U+000A)	`\n`
Tab (U+0009)	`\t`
Carriage return (U+000D)	`\r`
Form feed (U+000C)	`\f`
Double quote	`\"`
Backslash	`\\`	Must be handled first, otherwise the other sequences would be escaped twice.
Single quote	`\'`	Only with the "Also escape single quotes" option. Required in `char` literals (`'\''`), optional in string literals.
Other control characters (U+0000–U+001F, U+007F)	`\u0000` … `\u001F`	Always, since they are invisible.
Non-ASCII characters (é, 日, 😀)	`\u00E9`, `\u65E5`, `\uD83D\uDE00`	Only with the "\uXXXX" option. Characters outside the Basic Multilingual Plane become a surrogate pair.

Before / after

Input	Escaped output
`He said "hi"`	`He said \"hi\"`
`C:\Users\tom`	`C:\\Users\\tom`
Two lines separated by a line break	`line one\nline two`
`Café` (with the \uXXXX option)	`Caf\u00E9`

Unescaping

The unescape button decodes \b \n \t \r \f \" \' \\ \0, octal escapes (\101 = A, Java only) and \uXXXX sequences. Java processes \u escapes before lexing, so \u0022 is a real double quote that terminates a literal, a classic trap. C# additionally supports \x (variable length) and \U00XXXXXX escapes, and verbatim strings (@"C:\path") where only "" needs escaping; the tool targets the common escape syntax shared by both languages.

In code

// Java (Apache Commons Text)
StringEscapeUtils.escapeJava("Tab\there");     // Tab\\there
StringEscapeUtils.unescapeJava("Tab\\there");

// Java 15+: text blocks avoid most escaping
String json = """
    {"name": "Tom \\"the cat\\""}
    """;

// C#: use verbatim or raw string literals
string path = @"C:\Users\tom";
string raw  = """He said "hi" """;

Result