Unanswered

Replace expression doesn't work for back slashes

(0) Share

Report

Posted on by wolskis

I have a flow that ingests a CSV via the default SFTP connector. For some reason, this connector appends backslashes before double quotes, presumably so that they're escaped in the response body and not mistaken for JSON or another language.

Unfortunately, the replace() expression seems incapable of removing backslashes. I've tried using the character, the ascii code for the character and using a variable to inject it. None works. I've also tried cleaning the CSV response and replacing the slashes later in the flow when the data is re-used. I also tried using the replace expression to find anything with a backslash in it (eg. /"field/" is not matched, but 'field' is found).

I found this issue unsolved elsewhere
https://powerusers.microsoft.com/t5/General-Power-Automate/Remove-backslash-quot-quot-from-response/m-p/1440983#M85483

Categories:

General topics

I have the same question (0)

All responses (3)

Answers (0)

dep 5 on at

Like (0)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

I had a file name in json format starting with "\\\\" that I had to replace with "\\". It worked for me to do the replace funtion like so: Replace(variable,'\\\\','\\')

Hope it helps 🙂

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Chriddle 8,632 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

Like (1)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!
Yes, the backslash is the escape character of JSON.

So when you access the string value, that character will be gone unless it escapes itself.

An example:

Test1:

outputs('Compose')['Test1']

Test2:

outputs('Compose')['Test2']

Test2 wuith replace:

replace(outputs('Compose')['Test2'], '\', '')

You can see in the output that there is no backslash in Test1, and there are backslashes in Test2, which can be replaced in the usual way.

Was this reply helpful? Yes No
Wendy_Lumsden 58 on at

Like (0)

Report
Copy link

Link copied!

Hi @wolskis ,

I have a similar problem and wondered how you resolved this?

I tried the option suggested by @dep but when I used the output from the array without a backslash before the double quotations in a concat expression, the concat added a backslash before the double quotations again 😞

And using Replacing on the concat expression to remove the backslash did not work either.

(the concat with strings which contain double quotations is being used in an xml query).

Any assistance will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks
Wendy

Was this reply helpful? Yes No