What are all the escape characters?

Java Escape Sequences:

\u{0000-FFFF}  /* Unicode [Basic Multilingual Plane only, see below] hex value 
                  does not handle unicode values higher than 0xFFFF (65535),
                  the high surrogate has to be separate: \uD852\uDF62
                  Four hex characters only (no variable width) */
\b             /* \u0008: backspace (BS) */
\t             /* \u0009: horizontal tab (HT) */
\n             /* \u000a: linefeed (LF) */
\f             /* \u000c: form feed (FF) */
\r             /* \u000d: carriage return (CR) */
\"             /* \u0022: double quote (") */
\'             /* \u0027: single quote (') */
\\             /* \u005c: backslash (\) */
\{0-377}       /* \u0000 to \u00ff: from octal value 
                  1 to 3 octal digits (variable width) */

The Basic Multilingual Plane is the unicode values from 0x0000 - 0xFFFF (0 - 65535). Additional planes can only be specified in Java by multiple characters: the egyptian heiroglyph A054 (laying down dude) is U+1303F / 𓀿 and would have to be broken into "\uD80C\uDC3F" (UTF-16) for Java strings. Some other languages support higher planes with "\U0001303F".


You can find the full list here.

  • \t Insert a tab in the text at this point.
  • \b Insert a backspace in the text at this point.
  • \n Insert a newline in the text at this point.
  • \r Insert a carriage return in the text at this point.
  • \f Insert a formfeed in the text at this point.
  • \s Insert a space in the text at this point.
  • \' Insert a single quote character in the text at this point.
  • \" Insert a double quote character in the text at this point.
  • \\ Insert a backslash character in the text at this point.