Using Special Characters in Strings

When a string is being created or displayed, its text must be enclosed within double quotation marks. These quotation marks are not displayed, which brings up a good question: What if you want to display double quotation marks?

To display them, Java has created a special code that can be put into a string: ”. Whenever this code is encountered in a string, it is replaced with a double quotation mark. For example, examine the following:

System.out.println("Jane Campion directed "The Piano" in 1993.");

This code is displayed as the following:

Jane Campion directed "The Piano" in 1993.

You can insert several special characters into a string in this manner. The following list shows these special characters; note that each is preceded by a backslash ().

The newline character causes the text following the newline character to be displayed at the beginning of the next line. Look at this example:

System.out.println("Music by Michael Nyman");

This statement would be displayed like this:

Music by
Michael Nyman