There are already a few questions about MessagingFormat in general, but I have not found anything yet that answers my question. I know that single quotes break the pattern. If you use MessageFormat or Log4j, then something like “doesn't” can break possible placeholders.
See Inside String, a pair of single quotes can be used to quote any arbitrary characters except single quotes. For example, the pattern string "'{0}'" represents the string "{0}" rather than FormatElement. The single quotation mark itself must be represented by double single quotation marks “along the entire string”.
A simple example:
@Test public void test() { String pattern = "{0} doesn't show values ( {1}, {2}, {3}, {4} )"; final Object[] args = { "Testpattern", 100, 200, 300, 400 }; System.out.println(MessageFormat.format(pattern, args)); pattern = pattern.replaceAll("(?<!')'(?!')", "''"); System.out.println("Replaced singlequotes: " + MessageFormat.format(pattern, args)); }
Output:
Testpattern doesnt show values ( {1}, {2}, {3}, {4} ) Replaced singlequotes: Testpattern doesn't show values ( 100, 200, 300, 400 )
So, if I replace all single quotes using a regular expression it will work. I just made up a regular expression trying to replace only "single singlequotes" using the lookahead / lookbehind regular expression.
The regular expression replaces the examples:
doesn't -> doesn''t doesn''t -> doesn''t doesn'''t -> doesn'''t
I'm just wondering if there is any apache-commons utility (or any other library) that will handle "escapeSingleQuotes" for me instead of providing my own regular expression ...?