How can I escape a $ with text that follows it. Docs seem to say using a backslash, but that doesn't...

# getting-started

[Colton Idle]

How can I escape a $ with text that follows it. Docs seem to say using a backslash, but that doesn't work UNLESS theres a space after the dollar sign.

[ephemient]

"""some${"$"}thing"""

is the output if you ask the IDE to convert "some\$thing" to a raw string

[Colton Idle]

interesting. i saw the docs mentioned that for multiline

[Colton Idle]

i guess raw string is multiline then. thanks for the sanity check. phew

[Casey Brooks]

Yup, multiline strings don’t support escape sequences (by design), so you need to use that strange ${'$'} syntax. And it is documented at the bottom of this page

[Casey Brooks]

yes, raw/multiline strings are the same thing

[ephemient]

right. to be clear, raw string is maybe a slight misnomer since $ interpolation still works but they refer to the same thing in Kotlin (some other languages use the terms differently)

[ephemient]

and for the record, ${'$'} and ${"$"} both work, it doesn't matter which one you pick as the compiler will make it a static part of the string either way (it doesn't perform unnecessary constant interpolation at runtime)

[Casey Brooks]

Also, to the original statement of “Docs seem to say using a backslash, but that doesn’t work UNLESS theres a space after the dollar sign.“, it’s not that the backslash works when there’s a space afterwards, it’s that you may not have noticed that the backslash ended up in the resulting string. The dollar sign is also there because the compiler saw it was not part of an interpolation

https://pl.kotl.in/uKrR3RywG

[Jeff Lockhart]

Roman points out:

Kotlin does not have the concept of a "raw string". Kotlin has "multiline strings".

https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/KT-2425/Provide-a-way-for-escaping-the-dollar-sign-symbol-in-multiline-strings-and-string-templates

[ephemient]

it's sort of true that the Kotlin docs themselves don't call it a "raw string", but the Kotlin IntelliJ plugin certainly does

[Jeff Lockhart]

Yeah, I recall the docs used to mention it incorrectly somewhere too. It was fixed as a result of someone pointing it out in the comments.

There's definitely a certain amount of overlap between the behavior of Kotlin multiline strings and raw strings, since you can't escape characters. It's one of the few Kotlin language features I feel falls short, where we really need true multiline and raw string support, including multiline raw strings without string interpolation.