How to unescape?

Scott Sumner

Is the OP asking how to replace two character sequences (for example, “” followed by “r”) in his editor window with their corresponding single character value (13 or hex 0D in the example)? Just a guess as I can’t really tell.

This speaks to a general complaint about a lot of posters on this community: Not enough information is given to BEST solve a problem. People will post, “How can I do XXX?” when a much better question is “I think I need to do XXX because I need to achieve <insert detailed explanation here> – how can I best do this?”. The experts here, who could certainly answer the XXX question, might answer it in a totally different way with the benefit of background info that gives the poster a much better push towards solving their real problem in a efficient, clean and often elegant way! :)

Claudia Frank

Is the OP asking how to replace two character sequences (for example, “” followed by “r”) in his editor window with their corresponding single character value (13 or hex 0D in the example)? Just a guess as I can’t really tell.

Didn’t thought about this - thought OP maybe has some code with literals \t …
and the compiler complaint about it but …

Cheers
Claudia

Valerjans Vinogradovs

"\r\n\t …

as well as

\" … \r\n … \t …

can be unescaped by find/replace by one click on the button “Replace All” when:

in the first field (Find what) is entered: (\\r\\n)|(\t)|(\\\")

and in second field (Replace with) is entered: (?1(\r\n))(?2(\t))(?3(\"))

Valerjans Vinogradovs

a little correction to previous post: there must be \\t instead of \t in the first field

Gioacchino Piazzolla

hi i use this website to do it: https://www.freeformatter.com/json-escape.html

You can escape/unscape a string with this.

I’m here to ask if there is a plugin that does the same thing

Alan Kilborn

@Gioacchino-Piazzolla said in How to unescape?:

here to ask if there is a plugin that does the same thing

Probably nobody is going to the trouble to create a plugin to do something that a replace-operation recorded into a macro can easily do.

Of course, maybe that functionality is part of a plugin that does more than that (justifying the plugin’s existence); I don’t know.

Alan Kilborn

@Gioacchino-Piazzolla said in How to unescape?:

hi i use this website to do it: https://www.freeformatter.com/json-escape.html

So from what I see of that web site, recording the following Replace All macro will do the same conversion when later run on some selected text:

Start macro recording after setting up the Replace dialog as shown, press the button indicated with the red dot, then stop macro recording and save the macro with a descriptive name.

Here are the find/repl fields as text:

find: (?-i)(\x08)|(\x0c)|(\n)|(\r)|(\t)|(")|(\\)
repl: (?1\\b)(?2\\f)(?3\\n)(?4\\r)(?5\\t)(?6\\")(?7\\\\)

Note that \x08 could be replaced with \a and \x0c could be replaced with \f. As you like…

Edit: I just noticed that the subject of this thread was “unescaping” and my replace macro does “escaping”. Oh, well, the unescaping version is left as an exercise for the reader, using what I provided as the model. :-)

guy038

Hello @gioacchino-piazzolla, @alan-kilborn and All,

If you work with Windows files ( line endings = \r\n ) here are two regex S/R :

The first one Escape the usual characters :
- SEARCH \r\n(*SKIP)(*F)|(\a)|(\x08)|(\f)|(\n)|(\r)|(\t)|(")|(')|(\\)
- REPLACE \\(?1a)(?2x08)(?3f)(?4n)(?5r)(?6t)(?7")(?8')(?9\\)
The second one UNnescape the usual characters :
- SEARCH (?-i)\\(?:(a)|(x08)|(f)|(n)|(r)|(t)|(")|(')|(\\))
- REPLACE (?1\a)(?2\x08)(?3\f)(?4\n)(?5\r)(?6\t)(?7")(?8')(?9\\)

Now, Alan, a little mistake ! \a = \x07 and [\b] = \x08.

Note that \b must be in a character class as \b, outside a character class is an assertion defining the empty location between, either :

A Word character and a Non word char
A Non word character and a Word char

Best regards,

guy038

Alan Kilborn

@guy038 said in How to unescape?:

\a = \x07

Ah yes, when I said \x08 it was a repetitive typo. :-(
Meaning once I had the first mistake, I stopped thinking about it and just carried it on. :-( :-(

More interesting (and getting the “heat” off of me…) is your use of \r\n(*SKIP)(*F) which appears to be intended to not replace any \r\n pairs in the data. I don’t know that this is a valid thing to do. The website the “recent” OP pointed to doesn’t do that. Similar for the ' character.

guy038

Hi, @gioacchino-piazzolla, @alan-kilborn and All,

I agree that I could have written the first regex S/R to Escape these special characters as :

SEARCH (\a)|(\x08)|(\f)|(\n)|(\r)|(\t)|(")|(')|(\\)

REPLACE \\(?1a)(?2x08)(?3f)(?4n)(?5r)(?6t)(?7")(?8')(?9\\)

But , in that case, any text is changed in a one-line text. Just give it a try with the change.log or license.txt file ! Don’t know if this syntax is expected by the OP ?

Now, I added the single quote character as I remember that the TextFX plugin can escape/unescape the ' character !

BR

guy038