Escape a Backslash

Scripting Forums AppleScript | Mac OS X
#1

I need to set a variable to a backslash and a single quote for use with some command line scripting. In effect I’d like to do:

set x to "\'"

I know that needs to be escaped but for the life of me I can’t figure out how. I even copied this from the FAQ and ran it:

set theString to "This is a sentence containing a backslash (\\)."

but I get this as a result:
“This is a sentence containing a backslash (\).”

Which has two backslashes instead of one as expected. Is this broken in OS 10.4.4 using AppleScript 1.10.3? Can anyone else confirm this?

Thanks in advance,
Dan

#2

Never mind :smiley:

I was looking at the result in Script Editor which showed two backslashes. If I display the variable in a display dialog it looks right.

So to escape the backslash and quote I had to use:

set x to "\\" & "'"

Dan

#3

This will work fine:

set x to "\\'"