special chars (@, ?) as xml-string in android app

Question

If i try to do things like this, it doesn't work... (empty string or no resource type error)

<string name="random">?</string>
<string name="random">@</string>

i also tried the html entity variant

<string name="random">&#63;</string>

any ideas how to use the "?" and "@" as string resource in android?

Answer 1

Easiest way is to quote or backslash them:

<string name="random">"?"</string>
<string name="random">\?</string>

See here and here for a bit more discussion.

• ? reference styling attributes
• @ signs access other resources.

Here's a larger collection of string resource gotchas.

Answer 2

This is working for me:

<string name="twitter_hint">"@"twitter</string>