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AvoidEscapedUnicodeCharacters.md

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Pattern: Use of Unicode escape

Issue: -

Description

Prefer using actual Unicode character (e.g. ∞) over the equivalent Unicode escape (e.g. \u221e) - this makes the code easier to read and understand. Use escapes for non-printable characters, and comment if necessary.

You should not make code less readable simply out of fear that some programs might not handle non-ASCII characters properly. If that should happen, those programs are broken and they should be fixed.

Default configuration

<module name="AvoidEscapedUnicodeCharacters">
    <property name="allowEscapesForControlCharacters" value="true"/>
    <property name="allowByTailComment" value="true"/>
    <property name="allowNonPrintableEscapes" value="true"/>
</module>
  • allowEscapesForControlCharacters: Allow use escapes for non-printable(control) characters;
  • allowByTailComment: Allow use escapes if trail comment is present.
  • allowIfAllCharactersEscaped: Allow if all characters in literal are escaped.
  • allowNonPrintableEscapes: Allow if all characters in literal are escaped.

Examples

Example of incorrect code:

//Poor: the reader has no idea what this is.
String unitAbbrev = "\u03bcs";

Example of correct code:

String unitAbbrev = "μs"; //Best: perfectly clear even without a comment.

Further Reading