Printing Double-Quoted Strings in Java

When printing strings in Java, you may encounter instances where you wish to include double quotes within the output. By default, using System.out.print("Hello"); will simply print "Hello", excluding the quotes. To obtain output like "Hello" with the double quotes intact, you must employ a specific technique.

Escaping the Double Quote

To print "Hello" with the quotes, you need to escape the double quote character using a backslash (). The modified statement would be:

System.out.print("\"Hello\"");

By escaping the double quote, you instruct Java to treat it as a literal character rather than a string delimiter. This allows you to print the double quote along with the string.

Understanding Character Escapes

The backslash character serves as an escape sequence in Java strings and characters. It indicates that the following character is not to be interpreted literally but rather represents a special character or escape sequence. Other characters that require special treatment include:

• Carriage return and newline: "\r" and "\n"
• Backslash: "\"
• Single quote: "\'"
• Horizontal tab and form feed: "\t" and "\f"

Unicode Escape Sequences

In addition to the aforementioned character escapes, you can also include Unicode characters in your Java code using Unicode escape sequences. These sequences take the form "\uxxxx", where the xs represent hexadecimal digits. However, these sequences are distinct from ordinary string escapes and can be utilized anywhere in the Java program, not just within string or character literals.

Additional Resources

To delve deeper into this topic, consider the following resources:

• [Oracle Java Tutorial: Numbers and Strings - Characters](https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/java/data/characters.html)
• [In Java, is there a way to write a string literal without having to escape quotes?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1015693/in-java-is-there-a-way-to-write-a-string-literal-without-having-to-escape-quotes)