Java properties: Is there a way a key can include a blank character?

Question

Hi,

we are getting properties, we can not influence, out of a database and want to access them by a key/value mapping. We are facing the problem, that one of the property keys includes a blank character.

foo bar = barefoot

This is - correctly - interpreted as follows

key: foo
value: bar = barefoot

Is there a way to include the blank in the key so that it's not interpreted as the delimiter? I guess this behaviour is just like intended, but I thought I could give it a try here. :-)

Thank you.

Answer 1

Maybe you can escape the whitespaces: foo\ bar = barefoot

Edit: Oops, I did not see that you can't change the properties.

Answer 2

I assume by "properties", you mean a Java property file (as written/read by java.util.Properties).

Then, as you write yourself,

foo bar = barefoot

must indeed be interpreted as

   key: foo
   value: bar = barefoot

There's no way to configure this using the built-in Properties class. You must either manipulate your input (escape the whitespace, change it to _ and back...), or write your own parser. Writing your own parser is probably better, as obviously your input isn't really a Java properties file to begin with :-).

Answer 3

As it seems the delimiter should be =, not space. Hence - keyValuePair.split("=") should do.

If you are loading this from a java .properties file, then you can extend java.util.Properties and override this method

public synchronized void load(InputStream inStream) throws IOException

so that it parses the properties correctly.