How to add open and close quotes if A string has spaces

Question

I\'m trying to write an If then statement to see if a string has a space in it. If it does, I want it to put an \" and \" around the variable. Below is my current code:

Answer 1

To properly escape a double quote inside VB's double quoted string literal, you need to double it (no pun intended). This means an empty string "". When you squeeze a quote in it, you get 4 quotes """", and this really means just one double quote literal.

You should be using:

MsgBox("""" & ColumnText & """")

Instead of:

MsgBox(""" & ColumnText & """)

Another thing - notice how the syntax parser highlights your line when it has 3 quotes. In this case & ColumnText & is part of the literal, instead of being an inline variable.

Reference:

• String literals @ MSDN.

Answer 2

Using quote literals makes for hard to read code and as seen here, can easily lead to errors. I find it much easier to use (and read) String.Format and isolate things you want to call out differently. For instance:

msg = String.Format("There is a problem with [{0}]", columnText)

The result: There is a problem with [foobar]

If you really like quotes, or need for something else like a command line argument, you can still make the code more legible this way:

Const quote As String =  """"
' or
Private quote = Convert.ToChar(34)      ' 34 is the code for the quote char
'...
msg = String.Format("There is a problem with {0}{1}{0}", quote, columnText)

The result: There is a problem with "foobar" In cases where there are multiple things to wrap with quotes, you just repeat {0} for each as shown.

Answer 3

You can try this:

If ColumnText.Contains(" ") Then
                    MsgBox(Chr(34) & ColumnText & Chr(34))
                End If
            Next