How do I print a division symbol and parenthesis?

[Jeff Ciaccio]

I am trying to use the ASCII characters to add a division symbol and open & closed parenthesis, but this is not printing correctly.

JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(rootPane, "To get the balance point type this into your calculator: \n " + a +"\246 \028 1 - "+a+"\029");

a is a variable, and the calculation is: a / (1 - a)

Do I just have the wrong codes? Should I be looking up decimal or hex?

Thanks

[Duc Vo]

What's wrong with using the characters directly?
"To get the balance point type this into your calculator: \n " + a +"/ (1 - "+a+")"

[Jeff Ciaccio]

I did not realize I could use parenthesis in quotes, but I would like to show the division symbol to show students which key to press on their calculators.

Thanks

[fred rosenberger]

assuming you want to print a '\' character, you have to know that it has special meaning inside parens. usually it means "hey, treat the next character as something special" - as in the case of "\n" means "treat the 'n' as a 'newline' character". This is commonly referred to an "escaped n". the backslash is referred to as the escape character.

so how to you print the escape character? you ESCAPE IT!!!

System.out.println("this will print a single backslash: \\)";

if you want a single frontslash, you can just print it:

System.out.println("this will print a single frontslash: /");