How to unescape a Java string literal in Java?

Question

I\'m processing some Java source code using Java. I\'m extracting the string literals and feeding them to a function taking a String. The problem is that I need to pass the

Answer 1

I know this question was old, but I wanted a solution that doesn't involve libraries outside those included JRE6 (i.e. Apache Commons is not acceptable), and I came up with a simple solution using the built-in java.io.StreamTokenizer:

import java.io.*;

// ...

String literal = "\"Has \\\"\\\\\\\t\\\" & isn\\\'t \\\r\\\n on 1 line.\"";
StreamTokenizer parser = new StreamTokenizer(new StringReader(literal));
String result;
try {
  parser.nextToken();
  if (parser.ttype == '"') {
    result = parser.sval;
  }
  else {
    result = "ERROR!";
  }
}
catch (IOException e) {
  result = e.toString();
}
System.out.println(result);

Output:

Has "\  " & isn't
 on 1 line.