Using double quotes in hammer causes VMF to become corrupt

[Trico-Everfire]

Describe the bug

using double quotes (") in the instance params causes the VMF file (when you're inserting the params in the func_instance_parms) to become corrupt upon saving. this is most likely due to VMF's using double quotes to incase strings, and saving them causes hammer to become confused. a fix for this is to replace any double quotes in any hammer entity IO with escape characters like \" or replace them entirely with single quotes (')

To Reproduce

Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Open/create instance map
2. add func_instance_parms and add anything with the default value including double quotes.
3. save quit and load. if done correctly this should cause hammer to present a error and then (at least in my case) crash in response.

Expected behavior

The VMF file should become corrupt, the fix for this corruption (at least to me) is to either remove the entity manually or remove/replace the double quotes with something else.

Operating System (Optional: Only if OS Specific)

• N/A

[TeamSpen210]

This doesn't have much to do with instance params specifically, it's an issue with the BSP and VMF formats themselves - they don't parse \" escapes at all. Single quotes aren't really substitutable either, except for maybe in displayed text.

[TeamSpen210]

Curious why this was closed, it could be fixed by adding handling to those areas.

[Gocnak]

I would think a sanitizer for the inputs where it could cause corruption would be nice. Something to warn people that they shouldn't use double quotes maybe?

[FrozenDragon0]

@Gocnak Keep in mind that this corruption issue is already stated plenty of times in the Valve developer wiki.

[hexaflexahexagon]

@FrozenDragon0 people who aren't aware of the issue or are and aren't paying attention while mapping can easily accidentally input a double quote and then waste an hour or two debugging a very mysterious crash. either avoiding the crash or at the least shoving an error dialogue in the user's face is much preferred to how source currently handles this.

[Trico-Everfire]

@FrozenDragon0 people who aren't aware of the issue or are and aren't paying attention while mapping can easily accidentally input a double quote and then waste an hour or two debugging a very mysterious crash. either avoiding the crash or at the least shoving an error dialogue in the user's face is much preferred to how source currently handles this.

it does do this, it shows you a little error prompt, but it's vague, vmf's are text, and it'll tell you what line a error occurred, but:
A: the line it occurs on isn't the line that is the cause of the issue, it's the line that throws an error due to the issue.
B: not everyone has a IDE or even a proper text editor (like notepad++) so people with just notepad won't even know what line they're on.
C: not everyone knows what even causes the issue, it just tells you "something is wrong :(" and never explains what.
it's due to my coding background that i happened to know that """ in coding causes issues.

[RealityAnomaly]

Reopening as this is something we can at least mitigate.

[vrad-exe]

Could we just fix this properly by adding support for \"?

[ozxybox]

This feature has been implemented and is now live on the staging branch.