Sniffing out apostrophe's in SQL Server

[Val Pecaoco]

Hi Ranchers,
I came up with the following code that sniffs out any apostrophe's occuring in data that is to be inserted/updated to an SQL Server table:

  public String sniffOutApostrophe(String passedValue) {
    StringBuffer passedValueSB = new StringBuffer(passedValue);
    for (int i = 0; i < passedValueSB.length(); i++) {
      if (passedValueSB.substring(i, (i+1)).toString().equals("'")) {
        passedValueSB.replace(i, (i+1), "''");
        i++; // Don't leave this out or you'll crash!!!
      }
    }
    return passedValueSB.toString();
  }

The problem is that I have some misgivings with the above code about being slow or not being fully optimized. Any ideas?
I'm still using JDK 1.3.1 - would regular expressions in JDK 1.4 help a lot?
Thanks in advance for your opinions.
Ex Animo Java!
-- Val
[ May 09, 2002: Message edited by: Val Pecaoco ]

[mustang india]

Why cant we use just this
String s = "This is ''' my string";
System.out.println(s);
s = s.replace('\'', '\"');
System.out.println(s);1
This prints out
This is ''' my string and
This is """ my string

[David O'Meara]

I've been put on record before, and I still say (even though it isn't the strict purpose) to use PreparedStatements.
Instead of trying to figure out what needs escaping and how to escape it, make it the responsibility of the Driver.
Dave

[Val Pecaoco]

Hi mustang,

Originally posted by mustang india:
Why cant we use just this
String s = "This is ''' my string";
System.out.println(s);
s = s.replace('\'', '\"');
System.out.println(s);1
This prints out
This is ''' my string and
This is """ my string

But the string that will be stored in the database will be "This is """ my string", and not the original "This is ''' my string".
What my code did was to replace a single apostrophe with two, which, to a certain effect, the first apostrophe is a sort of escape character that tells SQL Server to accept the second apostrophe as data. I used the replace() method in StringBuffer because the replace() method in String can only replace a character with another single character, and '' obviously counts as two (which, formally, makes '' a String).
[ May 09, 2002: Message edited by: Val Pecaoco ]

[mustang india]

What I had given is just an eample, u can replace any number of single quotes with double quotes
when u say
s = s.replace('\'', '\"');
This will replace all occurences of ' with ".
Yeah u can use this with StringBuffer as well.
Regards,
Mustang.

[Jamie Robertson]

Val, you create a lot of temporary strings in your code. Each substring method returns a new temporary string. A better way may be to convert the string to a char array like this:

public String sniffOutApostrophe(String passedValue) 
{
    StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer( passedValue.length() + 5 );
    char[] passedCharArray = passedValue.toCharArray();
    for (int i = 0; i < passedCharArray.length; i++) 
    {   
        if ( passedCharArray[i] == '\'' ) 
        {
            sb.append('\'');  // add an extra ' for every '
        }
        sb.append( passedCharArray )
    }
    passedCharArray = null;
    return sb.toString();
  }

That should cut down on the number temporary String objects created.
Ex Animo Java!
Jamie
[ May 13, 2002: Message edited by: Jamie Robertson ]