How to display string formatters as plain text in Java?

Question

I need to display escape sequences (like \n, \t) as literal text instead of having them interpreted as control characters. For example:

String text = "Hello\nWorld!"; System.out.println(text);

// Current output:
Hello
World!

// Desired output:
Hello\nWorld!

I've tried using replace():

String text = "Hello\nWorld!";
text = text.replace("\\", "\\\\");
text = text.replace("\n", "\\n");
System.out.println(text);

But this approach seems cumbersome, especially when dealing with multiple escape sequences and quotation marks. Is there a more elegant or built-in way to achieve this in Java?

Additional context:

• The string may contain any escape sequence (\n, \t, \r, etc.)
• The string might include single (') or double (") quotes
• The solution should work with any valid Java string content

Answer 1

Here is an one way using streams.

String text = "He\f\bllo\nWor\rld!";
text = translate(text);

prints

He\f\bllo\nWor\rld!

• this splits the string and then replaces the proper control character with its escaped outerpart.

private static Map<Character, String> map = Map.of('\t', "\\t", '\b', "\\b", '\n',
        "\\n", '\f', "\\f", '\\', "\\\'", '"', "\\\"", '\r', "\\r");
public static String translate(String text) {
    return text.chars()
            .mapToObj(ch -> map.getOrDefault((char)ch, Character.toString(ch)))
            .collect(Collectors.joining());    
}