How to store a filepath in a database??

Question

hi,
Somewhere in my program i have to store a path that i'll need later to load an image into a label at runtime. But, when i try to store it, in mysql, it doesn't take the escape character, i mean if i try to store "e:\mydocs", my fuction call only stores : "e:mydocs". I'm trying to put the escape char in the DB but i can't. I'm using that call:
path.getText()
where path is a textbox. I'm using the mm driver for my connection, and i'm sure the problem is that when i store the path, in the DB, it doesn't store the escape char, the escape char doesn't appears when i make a query. Because of that i can't load the image later...
Hope someone faced this problem before, 'cause i really need an answer ;)

Answer 1

No, that wouldn't make any difference because there
aren't any special characters or escape characters in
the strings you claim you are having trouble with.
In fact if you do what you say you are doing, you
should not have the problem you say you have. So it
follows you are doing something else that you haven't
said. The only circumstance in which backslash
characters will "disappear" is when you use them in
string literals in your Java code, and that's what I
guess you have done.
In your Java code you need to write "e:\\mydocs" as a
string literal to represent the string "e:\mydocs".
This is ONLY in Java code, though, you should type
"e:\mydocs" into the text box.The special character appears in runtime execution and is passed to the DB after the "xxx.getText()". So, from here, it passes the backslash into the java code and from there it goes to the DB.
I couldn't use the "e:\\mydocs" expression cause the path doesn't come this way at runtime...
So to make it work , i used two functions that i made :
one of them to encode the string and the other one to decode it :
public String encode(String caminho) {
if (caminho==null)
return null;
int length = caminho.length();
StringBuffer codifica = new StringBuffer(2 * length);
for (int i=0; i<length; i++) {
char c = caminho.charAt(i);
if (c=='\\')
codifica.append("%");
else
codifica.append(c);
return codifica.toString();
public String decode(String caminho) {
if (caminho==null)
return null;
int length = caminho.length();
StringBuffer codifica = new StringBuffer(2 * length);
for (int i=0; i<length; i++) {
char c = caminho.charAt(i);
if (c=='%')
codifica.append("\\");
else
codifica.append(c);
return codifica.toString();
where i use the encode to store the path and the decode to retrieve it later. It'worked, but do you know if there's a java function that does the same thing???