[mapserver-dev] Quote escaping in mapfile strings

[Jeff McKenna]

I always use forward slashes in my Windows mapfiles and examples, so the 
typical C escaping would work fine.  I'd agree that using \ to escape is 
more common and intuitive than other options.

-jeff



On 11-01-12 12:10 AM, Daniel Morissette wrote:
> An issue that keeps coming back every once in a while is the lack of a
> mechanism to escape quotes (') and double quotes (") inside strings in
> mapfiles.
>
> 6.0 would be a good time to address this in case the fix implies new
> mapfile rules or limitations.
>
> The first step is to decide on the syntax to escape quotes. Can anyone
> think of a magic solution to this problem that will make everybody happy?
>
> Here are a few thoughts:
>
> 1- An obvious approach could be to use C escaping: \' , \" and \\ ...
> but unfortunately that would force the use of double \\ in all windows
> filename paths. I realize that one could use "/" on Windows instead but
> using this approach could cause unnecessary confusion with beginners and
> become a FAQ that comes up more often than the use dummy TEMPLATEs to
> enable queries in MapScript.
>
> 2- Another approach could be to use two double quotes ("") to escape a
> double quote, and two single quotes ('') to escape a single quote
>
> e.g.
> "This string contains ""Double Quotes"""
> 'This string contains ''Single Quotes'''
> "You don't need to escape single quotes in this string since it uses
> double quotes ("") as delimiter"
> 'And the same way "Double Quotes" don't need escaping here'
> "Two ''single quotes'' in this string are not considered an escape
> sequence and remain two individual chars'
>
> /me thinks #2 could work with a minimum of disruption to existing
> mapfiles, unless I missed something. We'd need Steve's opinion on how
> this can be implemented in the parser.
>
> Anyone have better suggestions?