An Introduction to “Escape Characters”

During the runtime of a program you might need to display certain information or ask a question. Some examples are :

1. While raising a support ticket, we get a ticket number after clicking on the submit button. Along with a number, we also get a message like “Keep this number for future reference. You will get a response within 6 days.”
2. While filing income tax returns, we might get a message, “Your return has been filed successfully.” And then some additional instructions after that.
3. When filing out a form, we might get instructions from a rejection/error message stating an expected password structure or mandatory fields.

These messages are either dynamic or hard-coded strings that are typed within double quotes.

Examples:

1. Your user id is “RAD00234”.

Strings are usually presented within double quotes in general. In the first example above, the user id value is within double quotes. This means that the first double quote — the one in front of the user id — would mark the end of that string. So can you guess how it is possible to display that entire sentence, double quotes and all?

In the second example, do you see that there are three sentences with each one starting in a new line?

It is an escape character that you display text like this. An escape character helps the character(s) that follow it be interpreted differently from their default behavior by the programming language.

Escape Character in VBA

In programming languages “\” — a backslash — is generally used as an escape character.

Example : \n for newline, \t for tab space.

But in VBA, we use a function named “chr()”. This in-built function returns the ASCII equivalent value of the parameter.

Syntax:

Chr(<number>)

Where number can be any number from 0 to 127 .

This function returns the corresponding ASCII value from the table below.

The ASCII Table

Dec	Hex	Binary	HTML	Char	Description
0	0	0	�	NUL	Null
1	1	1		SOH	Start of Header
2	2	10		STX	Start of Text
3	3	11		ETX	End of Text
4	4	100		EOT	End of Transmission
5	5	101		ENQ	Enquiry
6	6	110		ACK	Acknowledge
7	7	111		BEL	Bell
8	8	1000		BS	Backspace
9	9	1001			HT	Horizontal Tab
10	0A	1010	
	LF	Line Feed
11	0B	1011		VT	Vertical Tab
12	0C	1100		FF	Form Feed
13	0D	1101	
	CR	Carriage Return
14	0E	1110		SO	Shift Out
15	0F	1111		SI	Shift In
16	10	10000		DLE	Data Link Escape
17	11	10001		DC1	Device Control 1
18	12	10010		DC2	Device Control 2
19	13	10011		DC3	Device Control 3
20	14	10100		DC4	Device Control 4
21	15	10101		NAK	Negative Acknowledge
22	16	10110		SYN	Synchronize
23	17	10111		ETB	End of Transmission Block
24	18	11000		CAN	Cancel
25	19	11001		EM	End of Medium
26	1A	11010		SUB	Substitute
27	1B	11011		ESC	Escape
28	1C	11100		FS	File Separator
29	1D	11101		GS	Group Separator
30	1E	11110		RS	Record Separator
31	1F	11111		US	Unit Separator
32	20	100000	 	space	Space
33	21	100001	!	!	Exclamation mark
34	22	100010	"	“	Double quote
35	23	100011	#	#	Number
36	24	100100	$	$	Dollar sign
37	25	100101	%	%	Percent
38	26	100110	&	&	Ampersand
39	27	100111	'	‘	Single quote
40	28	101000	(	(	Left parenthesis
41	29	101001	)	)	Right parenthesis
42	2A	101010	*	*	Asterisk
43	2B	101011	+	+	Plus
44	2C	101100	,	,	Comma
45	2D	101101	-	–	Minus
46	2E	101110	.	.	Period
47	2F	101111	/	/	Slash
48	30	110000	0	0	Zero
49	31	110001	1	1	One
50	32	110010	2	2	Two
51	33	110011	3	3	Three
52	34	110100	4	4	Four
53	35	110101	5	5	Five
54	36	110110	6	6	Six
55	37	110111	7	7	Seven
56	38	111000	8	8	Eight
57	39	111001	9	9	Nine
58	3A	111010	:	:	Colon
59	3B	111011	&#59;	;	Semicolon
60	3C	111100	&#60;	<	Less than
61	3D	111101	&#61;	=	Equality sign
62	3E	111110	&#62;	>	Greater than
63	3F	111111	&#63;	?	Question mark
64	40	1000000	&#64;	@	At sign
65	41	1000001	&#65;	A	Capital / Upper case  A
66	42	1000010	&#66;	B	Capital / Upper case  B
67	43	1000011	&#67;	C	Capital / Upper case  C
68	44	1000100	&#68;	D	Capital / Upper case  D
69	45	1000101	&#69;	E	Capital / Upper case  E
70	46	1000110	&#70;	F	Capital / Upper case  F
71	47	1000111	&#71;	G	Capital / Upper case  G
72	48	1001000	&#72;	H	Capital / Upper case  H
73	49	1001001	&#73;	I	Capital / Upper case  I
74	4A	1001010	&#74;	J	Capital / Upper case  J
75	4B	1001011	&#75;	K	Capital / Upper case  K
76	4C	1001100	&#76;	L	Capital / Upper case  L
77	4D	1001101	&#77;	M	Capital / Upper case  M
78	4E	1001110	&#78;	N	Capital / Upper case  N
79	4F	1001111	&#79;	O	Capital / Upper case  O
80	50	1010000	&#80;	P	Capital / Upper case  P
81	51	1010001	&#81;	Q	Capital / Upper case  Q
82	52	1010010	&#82;	R	Capital / Upper case  R
83	53	1010011	&#83;	S	Capital / Upper case  S
84	54	1010100	&#84;	T	Capital / Upper case  T
85	55	1010101	&#85;	U	Capital / Upper case  U
86	56	1010110	&#86;	V	Capital / Upper case  V
87	57	1010111	&#87;	W	Capital / Upper case  W
88	58	1011000	&#88;	X	Capital / Upper case  X
89	59	1011001	&#89;	Y	Capital / Upper case  Y
90	5A	1011010	&#90;	Z	Capital / Upper case  Z
91	5B	1011011	&#91;	[	Left square bracket
92	5C	1011100	&#92;	\	Backslash
93	5D	1011101	&#93;	]	Right square bracket
94	5E	1011110	&#94;	^	Caret / circumflex
95	5F	1011111	&#95;	_	Underscore
96	60	1100000	&#96;	`	Grave / accent
97	61	1100001	&#97;	a	Lower case  a
98	62	1100010	&#98;	b	Lower case  b
99	63	1100011	&#99;	c	Lower case  c
100	64	1100100	&#100;	d	Lower case  d
101	65	1100101	&#101;	e	Lower case  e
102	66	1100110	&#102;	f	Lower case  f
103	67	1100111	&#103;	g	Lower case  g
104	68	1101000	&#104;	h	Lower case  h
105	69	1101001	&#105;	i	Lower case  i
106	6A	1101010	&#106;	j	Lower case  j
107	6B	1101011	&#107;	k	Lower case  k
108	6C	1101100	&#108;	l	Lower case  l
109	6D	1101101	&#109;	m	Lower case  m
110	6E	1101110	&#110;	n	Lower case  n
111	6F	1101111	&#111;	o	Lower case  o
112	70	1110000	&#112;	p	Lower case  p
113	71	1110001	&#113;	q	Lower case  q
114	72	1110010	&#114;	r	Lower case  r
115	73	1110011	&#115;	s	Lower case  s
116	74	1110100	&#116;	t	Lower case  t
117	75	1110101	&#117;	u	Lower case  u
118	76	1110110	&#118;	v	Lower case  v
119	77	1110111	&#119;	w	Lower case  w
120	78	1111000	&#120;	x	Lower case  x
121	79	1111001	&#121;	y	Lower case  y
122	7A	1111010	&#122;	z	Lower case  z
123	7B	1111011	&#123;	{	Left curly bracket
124	7C	1111100	&#124;	|	Vertical bar
125	7D	1111101	&#125;	}	Right curly bracket
126	7E	1111110	&#126;	~	Tilde
127	7F	1111111	&#127;	DEL	Delete

Escaping a Double Quote

In order to display one double quote as a part of the string, we have to use double quotes twice consecutively. So you should use a double quote to escape a double quote.

Below, I also show you how to use the Chr() function to output a line feed, the character “#”, and “%”.

Example:

Sub demo_escape()

' see the differences in output
    Debug.Print "I love to drink tea."
    Debug.Print "I love to drink ""tea""."
    
    Debug.Print "I live in England."
    Debug.Print "I live in ""England""."
    
'chr(10) is equivalent to a new line. two sentences are concatenated here.
    Debug.Print "I have got promoted. What about you?"
    Debug.Print "I have got promoted." & Chr(10) & "What about you?"
 
    Debug.Print Chr(35) & "Number"
    Debug.Print Chr(37) & "Percent"
    
End Sub

Conclusion

An escape character is very helpful for displaying strings or messages the way we want.  As an automation specialist, I have faced situations where some unknown characters need to be identified on a webpage. The built-in function Chr() has very helpful for me in difficult situations like this.

I’ve also widely used this in my coding too, because of its robustness and reliability. VBA has certainly simplified the use of escape characters by introducing a function that uses the ASCII table. One last bonus tip — there is a function ASCII(<character>) that you can use to return the ASCII number (Dec) from the table above.