net.sf.mmm.util.lang.api

Interface StringSyntax

All Known Subinterfaces:

CharScannerSyntax

All Known Implementing Classes:

AbstractCharScannerSyntax, SimpleCharScannerSyntax, StringSyntaxBean

public interface StringSyntax

This interface defines the syntax for a decoding and encoding values from/to String.

Since:

3.0.0

Author:

Joerg Hohwiller (hohwille at users.sourceforge.net)

Method Summary

Modifier and Type	Method and Description
char	getEscape() This method gets the character used as escape.
char	getQuoteEnd() This method gets the character used to end a quotation.
char	getQuoteStart() This method gets the character used to start a quotation that should be terminated by a quote-end character.

Method Detail

getQuoteStart

char getQuoteStart()

This method gets the character used to start a quotation that should be terminated by a quote-end character. The text inside the quote is taken as is (without the quote characters).
Common examples for quote characters are the single quotes (') and double quotes (").

Returns:

the character used to start a quotation or '\0' to disable.

getQuoteEnd

char getQuoteEnd()

This method gets the character used to end a quotation.

Returns:

the character used to end a quotation or '\0' to disable.

See Also:

getQuoteStart()

getEscape

char getEscape()

This method gets the character used as escape. It is used to mark special characters like getQuoteStart() to allow these characters also in the payload. The escape itself is removed on decoding while the next character is taken as is without any special interpretation.
The most common escape character is the backslash (\).
Here are some examples for decoding:

escape	input	output
\	a\b\\c	ab\c
~	a~b~~~c	ab~c

Returns:

the escape character or '\0' for no escaping.