Regex.Unescape Method

Converts any escaped characters in the input string.

Namespace:  System.Text.RegularExpressions
Assembly:  System (in System.dll)

public static string Unescape(
	string str


Type: System.String
The input string containing the text to convert.

Return Value

Type: System.String
A string of characters with any escaped characters converted to their unescaped form.


str includes an unrecognized escape sequence.


str is null.

The Unescape method performs one of the following two transformations:

  • It reverses the transformation performed by the Escape method by removing the escape character ("\") from each character escaped by the method. These include the \, *, +, ?, |, {, [, (,), ^, $,., #, and white space characters. In addition, the Unescape method unescapes the closing bracket (]) and closing brace (}) characters.


Unescape cannot reverse an escaped string perfectly because it cannot deduce precisely which characters were escaped,

  • It replaces the representation of unprintable characters with the characters themselves. For example, it replaces \a with \x07. The character representations it replaces are \a, \b, \e, \n, \r, \f, \t, and \v.

If the Unescape method encounters other escape sequences that it cannot convert, such as \w or \s, it throws an ArgumentException.

.NET Framework


.NET Framework Client Profile

Supported in: 4, 3.5 SP1

Portable Class Library

Supported in: Portable Class Library


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