How can I place a backtick (`) inside a template literal?

Question

How can I write a template literal in ECMAScript 6 that will contain backticks (`) in and by itself, (i.e., nested backticks)?

For example:

var query = `
  UPDATE packet
  SET
  `association` = "3485435",
  `tagname` = "associated"
 `

---

The reason I need it:

It's quite obvious in my code example above.

I'm trying to build node-mysql queries as Strings and store them in a variable for passing them to MySQL. The MySQL query syntax requires backticks for UPDATE-style queries.

• The only way I can have them look neat and tidy is by using template literals. Otherwise, the queries using regular single-line strings look awful, because they end up being very long is some cases.

• I also want to avoid terminating lines using \n as it's cumbersome.

Answer 1

See 11.8.6 Template Literal Lexical Components

A template without substitutions is defined as

NoSubstitutionTemplate ::
    ` TemplateCharactersopt `

where a template character is

TemplateCharacter ::
    $ [lookahead ≠ { ]
    \ EscapeSequence
    LineContinuation
    LineTerminatorSequence
    SourceCharacter but not one of ` or \ or $ or LineTerminator

Therefore, ` can't be a template character unless you escape it by preceding it with \.