does javascript have literal strings?

Question

In c# and ruby and many other languages you can denote a string as to not need escaping.
in c# its like this

string s = @"\whatever\this\is";

the results are when printed

\whatever\this\is

my question is, is this supported in any form in javascript?

Answer 1

Short answer: No

Long answer: Noooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Answer 2

No, but you can use escape sequences to get the same effect. Check out the following link. It has a list of escape sequences for Javascript:

http://www.c-point.com/javascript_tutorial/special_characters.htm

According to the link your example would be:

var s = '\whatever\this\is';

It might help to undestand if there is a reason you can;t use the escape sequences to achieve your goal.

Answer 3

I don't know what you're getting at, but one way to get around the problem of escaping (etc) is use a trick that John Resig seems to like a lot. You include <script> blocks in a page, but give them a "type" like "text/plain" to make sure that the browser doesn't hand them over to Javascript. Then use use the text of the script block for whatever you like.

<script id='a_string' type='text/plain'>
  Here is some stuff.
  There might be some \escape sequences in it.
</script>

Then you can grab that with $('#a_string').text() (or with getElementById if you're not using jQuery or something like that).

edit: Here's John Resig's explanation about why dropping stuff into script blocks like that is a good idea:

Quick tip: Embedding scripts in your page that have a unknown content-type (such is the case here - the browser doesn't know how to execute a text/html script) are simply ignored by the browser - and by search engines and screenreaders. It's a perfect cloaking device for sneaking templates into your page. I like to use this technique for quick-and-dirty cases where I just need a little template or two on the page and want something light and fast.

Taken from this page: http://ejohn.org/blog/javascript-micro-templating/

Answer 4

Just escape the escapes

var myCrazyString = "\\yes\\we\\have\\no\\bananas"