How to escape a { character in a MessageFormat pattern string?

Question

I have a string like the following.

ABC {A WELL-KNOWN MAGICIAN} WILL PERFORM AT {0} FOR {1} HOURS.

There is no placeholder for the first pair of curly braces. When I pass this string to MessageFormat.format(String, Object[]) method with an object array containing two strings to replace the placeholders {0} and {1}, I get the following error.

java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: All argument identifiers have to be either non-negative numbers or strings following the pattern ([:ID_Start:] [:ID_Continue:]*).

It appears that the first pair of brace is being parsed for the first placeholder and since it is not a valid placeholder, the error occurs.

How can I tell MessageFormat.format to ignore the first pair of curly braces and work with the other two?

possible duplicate http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1187093/can-i-escape-braces-in-a-java-messageformat — m4rtin, May 04 '14 at 10:34
I agree, my question is a duplicate of the one listed above. — Pankaj Dwivedi, May 04 '14 at 10:46
I also believe the official documentation for this class is poorly illustrated. — Pankaj Dwivedi, May 04 '14 at 10:48

score 8 · Accepted Answer · answered May 04 '14 at 10:33

8

Put a pair of single quotes around the part you don't want to be treated as parameter placeholders. i.e.

ABC '{A WELL-KNOWN MAGICIAN}' WILL PERFORM AT {0} FOR {1} HOURS.

answered May 04 '14 at 10:33

Ferruccio

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Just like `SimpleDateFormat` uses apostrophes to escape non-placeholder text: `"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm"`(T). – Joop Eggen May 04 '14 at 10:42
Thanks been stuck on that for a while! – Celt May 12 '16 at 16:15

How to escape a { character in a MessageFormat pattern string?

1 Answers1