double quotes in expression

[Lowell Filak]

The following message was sent by Bill Binko <bill at BINKO.NET> on Thu, 12
May 2005 18:48:28 -0400.

> On Thu, 12 May 2005, Steve Lime wrote:
>
> > You could:
> >
> >  1) Write your expression like so using single quotes:
> >
> >     EXPRESSION 'Symbol (12, 1, "ESRI IGL Font20", 1)'
> >
> >  2) Perhaps consider looking for sub-strings with regular
expressions? Depends on how the values differ though from symbol to
symbol (that is is the 12, the 1, the "ESRI IGL Font20" or the 1 really
important):
> >
> >     EXPRESSION /ESRI IGL FONT 20/
> >
> > Steve
>
>
> Steve,
>
> Is there an escape character in Mapserver strings?  For example, does \"
> mean a literal quotation mark?
>
> I can imagine times where the switch to single quotes won't help, for
> example, someone with polycap tablenames in a PostGIS connection (note the
> other running thread on this and the postgis-users board).
>
> DATA "geom from (SELECT geom, oid from \"PolyCapTableName\" where feature
> = 'FooBar') as foo using unique oid using SRID 123"
>
> Since 'FooBar' needs the single quotes for PostGIS, using single quotes
> for the whole thing won't work.
>
> Looking at the code, it looks like something could be done in maplexer.c
> or mapfile.c to perform that escape on reading the strings.  It might help
> solve alot of these issues.
>
> Just a thought

Bill,

Look for 'escaping single quotes' (subject) in the May list archives.
It doesn't appear that a fix is simple.

HTH

Lowell