Specifying special characters in the text property

Specifying special characters in the text property

The following rules specify how to include special characters in the text property of a text control MXML tag, either in a property assignment, such as text="the text", or in the body of an <mx:text> subtag.

In standard text

The following rules determine how you use special characters if you do not use a CDATA section:

• To use the special characters left angle bracket (<), right angle bracket (>), and ampersand (&), insert the XML character entity equivalents of &lt;, &gt;, and &amp;, respectively. You can also use &quot; and &apos; for double-quotation marks (") and single-quotation marks ('), and you can use numeric character references, such as &#165 for the Yen mark (¥). Do not use any other named character entities; Flex treats them as literal text.
• You cannot use the character that encloses the property text string inside the string. If you surround the string in double-quotation marks ("), use the escape sequence \" for any double-quotation marks in the string. If you surround the string in single-quotation marks (') use the escape sequence \' for any single-quotation marks in the string. You can use single-quotation marks inside a string that is surrounded in double-quotation marks, and double-quotation marks inside a string that is surrounded in single-quotation marks.
• Flex text controls ignore escape characters such as \t or \n in the text property. They ignore or convert to spaces, tabs and line breaks, depending on whether you are specifying a property assignment or an <mx:text> subtag. To include line breaks, put the text in a CDATA section. In the Text control text="string" attribute specifications, you can also specify them as numeric character entities, such as &#013; for a Return character or &#009; for a Tab character, but you cannot do this in an <mx:text> subtag.