Print String with escape non printable characters

Question

I have this String

String x="String containning special chars  \u202C \n  \u202C  \u202C  \u202C";

How can I print out this: String containning special chars \‬ \\n \‬ \‬ \‬ ?

Tried

System.out.println(x.replace("\\","\\\\"));

But that only prints String containning special chars ‬ \\n ‬ ‬ ‬

Also tried

String out = org.apache.commons.lang3.StringEscapeUtils.unescapeJava(x);
System.out.println(out);

But that also doesn't help.

Any one with a suggestion or an API that I am not aware of?

UPDATE - SOLUTION

Following @lbear aproach I came up with this functions that deals most cases of escaped Strings

public static String removeUnicodeAndEscapeChars(String input) {
    StringBuilder buffer = new StringBuilder(input.length());
    for (int i = 0; i < input.length(); i++) {
        if ((int) input.charAt(i) > 256) {
            buffer.append("\\u").append(Integer.toHexString((int) input.charAt(i)));
        } else {
            if (input.charAt(i) == '\n') {
                buffer.append("\\n");
            } else if(input.charAt(i) == '\t'){
                buffer.append("\\t");
            }else if(input.charAt(i) == '\r'){
                buffer.append("\\r");
            }else if(input.charAt(i) == '\b'){
                buffer.append("\\b");
            }else if(input.charAt(i) == '\f'){
                buffer.append("\\f");
            }else if(input.charAt(i) == '\''){
                buffer.append("\\'");
            }else if(input.charAt(i) == '\"'){
                buffer.append("\\");
            }else if(input.charAt(i) == '\\'){
                buffer.append("\\\\");
            }else {
                buffer.append(input.charAt(i));
            }
        }
    }
    return buffer.toString();
}

Answer 1

Use Integer.toHexString((int)x.charAt(34)); , you can get the string of the unicode char, and add \\\\u\u003c/code> before it, you will get the String .

public static String removeUnicode(String input){
    StringBuffer buffer = new StringBuffer(input.length());
    for (int i =0; i < input.length(); i++){
        if ((int)input.charAt(i) > 256){
        buffer.append("\\u").append(Integer.toHexString((int)input.charAt(i)));
        } else {
            if ( input.charAt(i) == '\n'){
                buffer.append("\\n");
            } else {
                buffer.append(input.charAt(i));
            }
        }
    }
    return buffer.toString();
}

Answer 2

There is the Apache Commons StringEscapeUtils which has HTML encoding. This encoding is pretty close to what you may need

String escaped code = StringEscapeUtils.escapeHtml(rowId)

See doc

Answer 3

String original = "String containning special chars  \u202C \n  \u202C  \u202C  \u202C";
String escaped = original.replace("\u202C", "\\u202C");
System.out.println(escaped);