String Escape and Unescape

Prepare text to paste inside a string literal — or turn escaped text back into readable text — for JSON, JavaScript, SQL, CSV, regex, Unicode escapes and XML.

Result

Paste text to escape or unescape it.

How to use this tool

Choose Escape or Unescape and a format.
Paste the text. The result updates as you type.

How it works

JSON: quotes, backslashes and control characters become \", \\, \n and so on.
JavaScript: as JSON, plus single quotes, backticks and ${ so the text is safe in any kind of quotes.
SQL: single quotes are doubled (O''Brien).
CSV: the value is wrapped in double quotes and inner quotes are doubled.
Regex: characters such as . * + ? ( ) [ ] get a backslash so they match literally.
Unicode: non-ASCII characters become \uXXXX.
XML: & < > " ' become entities.

Example

SQL

O'Brien escaped for SQL is O''Brien.

Regex

1.5*(x) escaped for a regular expression is **1\.5\*\(x\)**.

Privacy and limitations

Everything runs in your browser; nothing you paste is uploaded or stored.
Escaping for SQL is no substitute for parameterised queries, which prevent SQL injection properly.

Frequently asked questions

Why does unescaping JSON fail?

The text must be the inside of a valid JSON string: quotes and backslashes must already be escaped, and line breaks written as \n.

How are emoji escaped?

As two \u escapes (a surrogate pair), as JSON and JavaScript require: 😀 becomes \uD83D\uDE00.