How do you get StringBuilder's ToString method to not escape the escape characters in a string?

Question

Thanks to NgM I am using StringBuilder in .NET 3.5 to find and escape special chars. However, when I use the ToString method, it escapes the escape chars which then makes the previous exercise useless. Anyone know how to get around that?

Here is the code:

    private String ParseAndEscapeSpecialChars(String input)
    {
        StringBuilder sBuilder = new StringBuilder(input);
        String output;
        String specialChars = @"([-\]\[<>\?\*\\\""/\|\~\(\)\#/=><+\%&\^\'])";
        Regex expression = new Regex(specialChars);

        if (expression.IsMatch(input))
        {
            sBuilder.Replace(@"\", @"\\");
            sBuilder.Replace(@"'", @"\'");                
        }

        output = sBuilder.ToString();
        return output;
    }

Here are the results from debug:

input       "005 - SomeCompany's/OtherCompany's Support Center"
sBuilder    {005 - SomeCompany\'s/OtherCompany\'s Support Center}
output      "005 - SomeCompany\\'s/OtherCompany\\'s Support Center"

Answer 1

StringBuilder doesn't escape characters. It does nothing special or clever. Dollars to doughnuts you're just seeing this in the debugger, which does show you an escaped version.