Neptune with Tinkerpop > How to escape $ symbol?

Tried to add a property that contains $

gremlin> g.V('some-node-id').property("money", "10 $")
groovysh_parse: 1: illegal string body character after dollar sign;
   solution: either escape a literal dollar sign "\$5" or bracket the value expression "${5}" @ line 1, column 72.
   ').property("money", "10 $")

So I escaped the $ symbol

gremlin> g.V('some-node-id').property("money", "10\$")
{"requestId":"xyz","code":"MalformedQueryException","detailedMessage":"Query parsing failed at line 1, character position at X, error message : token recognition error at: '$'"}
Type ':help' or ':h' for help.

Try a basic escaping, that worked fine

gremlin> g.V('some-node-id').property("money", "10\"")
==>v[some-node-id]

Double the escape $ since Neptune has gone crazy

gremlin> g.V('some-node-id').property("money", "10\\$")
groovysh_parse: 1: illegal string body character after dollar sign;
   solution: either escape a literal dollar sign "\$5" or bracket the value expression "${5}" @ line 1, column 72.
   ').property("money", "10\\$")
                                 ^

Whats wrong in my query?

Solution

Thanks for reporting this issue. This has also been answered in the Amazon Neptune forums https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?messageID=862849

The workaround for this problem is to use single quotes around the string where you are adding the $ sign. For example:

gremlin> g.addV("Animal").property(id,"simba") 
==>v[simba] 
gremlin> g.V('simba').property('money','$123') 
==>v[simba] 
gremlin> g.V().has('money','$123') 
==>v[simba] 
gremlin> g.V('simba').property('new_money','123 $10') 
==>v[simba]

However, I do understand that it should work with the double quotes as well after you escape the $. This is a bug in our parser and we are actively working on a fix.

Further I should note that the bug only impacts the clients written in groovy language which send queries as strings e.g. gremlin console. GLVs (Java/Python/DotNet/JS) and other string-based clients where the '$' character is not a reserved character will work just fine.

Regards,

Divij