How to decode a String with '& # 39;'?

Hi All,

I have a question. Right now one of the field in our database, the Comments field, which is coming from other online systems, has encoded characters in it. For example, it's possible to have '& # 39;' in the Comments field instead of \'. Or '& QUOT;' in the Comments field instead of \". How can I decode them back to \' and \" in Java? I tried java.net.URLDecoder.decode(comments) and it didn't work. What do I do?

Thanks!
Jinghui

Do you need to do that? The escape sequences \' and \" are there for the compiler's sake, not the JRE. That is, if you had:

String sentence1 = "\"It\'s a rainy day,\" he said.";

that could be equivalent to:

Connection conn = this.getConnection(); String aQuery = "SELECT SENTENCE FROM PARAGRAPH WHERE " + "SENTENCE_ID = 1 AND PARAGRAPH_ID = 1"; ResultSet rs = conn.prepareStatement(aQuery).executeQuery(); String sentence = null; while(rs.next()){ sentence2 = rs.getString(1); }

If the database has in the SENTENCE field:
"It's a rainy day," he said.
Then sentence1.equals(sentence2) is true.

Or---Did I misread your question?

Does the database contain
"It's a rainy day," he said.
[ March 23, 2005: Message edited by: Joel McNary ]

You are correct. The database contains '& # 39;' and '& QUOT;', like this:
He said:" I'm not like that."

Oops, my encoded string is being decoded automatically by HTML. I meant, The database contains '& # 39;' and '& QUOT;', like this:

He said:& # 39; I& QUOT;m not like that.& # 39;