How to escape the special character in YAML with examples

This tutorial explains escape special characters in yaml files.

Characters are easily added to yaml for reading.

Normal strings are represented in yaml values as a string. But you need to enclose in double quotes for escape characters or use Unicode enclosed in quotes.

Special characters: ( %,\, { },(),_,- , : [] & * ?,% space : ( ) tab: ( \t ) line break character: ( \n ) The quote character: ( ’ ’ ) The double quote character: ( “)

Yaml escape characters Examples,

By default, yaml does not enclose quotes with strings. When you use special characters, You need to enclose them in double or single quotes. Sometimes, You have a colon and a hyphen in the values.

For example, Url contains these characters, So wrap in double or single quotes instead of escape characters.

--- # Application configuration - application.yaml
author: Franc
service:
        url: "http://www.api-my.com/"
        kid:

How can I escape % characters in YAML?

One way is to use enclose in quotes, the username attribute contains value %, which is enclosed in double quotes.

--- # Application configuration - application.yaml
author: Franc
service:
        username: "% abc"
        kid:

How do you write special characters in yaml?

Special characters are not displayed as normal strings in yaml values.

You need to enclose double or single quotes which contain special characters.

Special characters : \,:,;,_,(),$,%,^,@,,

How do you escape quotes in YAML?

to special characters quote in yaml, you need to do it in three ways

using quotes enclose, for example name: john' eric
using Unicode characters, name: john\u0027eric where \u0027 is a single quote, \u0022 is a double quote.

Does YAML accept special characters?

Yaml can contain normal characters as well as special characters. Special characters can be enclosed using double quotes or special Unicode character

Does the Yaml file contain spaces and quotes?

Yaml file contains any characters, Normal characters are placed without double quotes.

If a string contains special characters, You need to apply escape. escape can be done by

using quotes, for example name: john eric
using Unicode characters, name: john\u0020eric
using entity escapes characters, for example name: john" 0eric

Yaml escape characters list

Space: “\u0020” ``
Single quote: “\u0027” (')
Double quote: “\u0022” (")
space: “ ”
colon: “:”
ampersand: “&”

How do you get out of the colon in YAML?

Yaml file contains any characters, Normal characters are placed without double quotes.

If the string contains special characters such as a colon, You need to apply escape. escape can be done for the colon as given below

using quotes, for example name: john: eric
using Unicode characters, name: john\u0003Aeric
using entity escapes characters, example name: john:0eric

How do I get out of the backslash in YAML?

Yaml contains strings, sometimes, you can include \ as an escape for newlines, tabs These can be enclosed in double-quotes.

Example is

new line example name: line1\\n line2
tab example name: str \\t str2

Can YAML values have spaces?

Yaml file contains spaces that can be escaped using quotes or.