Special characters

The double-quotation marks ("), single-quotation mark ('), and number sign (#) characters have special meaning to ColdFusion. To include any of them in a string, double the character; for example, use ## to represent a single # character.

The need to escape the single- and double-quotation marks is context-sensitive. Inside a double-quoted string, you do not need to escape single-quotation mark (apostrophe) characters. Inside a single-quoted string, you do not escape double-quotation mark characters.

The following example illustrates escaping special characters, including the use of mixed single- and double-quotation marks:

<cfset mystring = "We all said ""For He's a jolly good fellow.""">
<cfset mystring2 = 'Then we said "For She''s a jolly good fellow".'>
<cfoutput>
   #mystring#<br>
   #mystring2#<br>
   Here is a number sign: ##
</cfoutput>

The output looks like this:

We all said "For He's a jolly good fellow."
Then we said "For She's a jolly good fellow."
Here is a number sign: # 

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