Error in strings.xml file in Android

Question

post your complete string. Though, my guess is there is an apostrophe (') character in your string. replace it with (\') and it will fix the issue. for example,

//strings.xml
<string name="terms">
Hey Mr. Android, are you stuck?  Here, I\'ll clear a path for you.  
</string>

Ref:

http://www.mrexcel.com/forum/showthread.php?t=195353

https://code.google.com/archive/p/replicaisland/issues/48

Solution

Apostrophes in the strings.xml should be written as

\'

---

Example

In my case I had an error with this string in my strings.xml and I fixed it.

<item>Most arguments can be ended with three words, "I don\'t care".</item>

Here you see my app builds properly with that code.

Here is the actual string in my app.

https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/string-resource.html#FormattingAndStyling

Escaping apostrophes and quotes

If you have an apostrophe or a quote in your string, you must either escape it or enclose the whole string in the other type of enclosing quotes. For example, here are some stings that do and don't work:

<string name="good_example">"This'll work"</string>
<string name="good_example_2">This\'ll also work</string>
<string name="bad_example">This doesn't work</string>
<string name="bad_example_2">XML encodings don&apos;t work</string>

You have to put \ before an apostrophe. Like this \' , Also check that you are editing strings.xml and not values.xml (android studio directs you to this file when shows the error). Because if you edit values.xml and try to compile again, the error persists. This was happening to me recently.

Use this regex (?<!\\)' for searching an unescaped apostrophe. It finds an apostrophe that not preceded by a backslash.

I use hebrew(RTL language) in strings.xml. I have manually searched the string.xml for this char: ' than I added the escape char \ infront of it (now it looks like \' ) and still got the same error!

I searched again for the char ' and I replaced the char ' with \'(eng writing) , since it shows a right to left it looks like that '\ in the strings.xml !!

Problem solved.