How can I escape curly braces within {code} tags?

[Patrick McElhaney]

I was trying to show someone how to use the {code} tag in a comment in Crucible. I want to wrap my example in code tags, but have the literal "{code}" show up in the example.

Hey girl, I heard you like putting code in your comments.

{code}

\{code\}

// Your code goes here.
\{code\}

{code}

And this is how it came out:

Hey girl, I heard you like putting code in your comments.

\{code\}
    // Your code goes here.
    \{code\}

How can I enter the comment so that it appears like this?

Hey girl, I heard you like putting code in your comments.

{code}
    // Your code goes here.
    {code}

[Martin Ivancic]

You can use HTML escape characters to do the curly braces: 

{ = {

} = }

Example: {{{your text here}}}

[Jason Sachs]

Doesn't work in {code} tags.

[Martin Ivancic]

Jason, you are right, it does not work with {code} tags. It does work for the problem that Patrick was having: Hey girl, I heard you like putting code in your comments. {code} // Your code goes here. {code} As far as I know, in {code} tags there is no need to escape curly braces. You might need to put the actual tag in it's own line: {code} { "Name": "Somename" "Lastname": "Somelastname" } {code}

[Patrick McElhaney]

Sigh. I can't figure out how to enter code in the question so it doesn't create several disjointed code blocks.

You guys, this would be so much easier if you just got rid of these proprietary markup languages and switched to Markdown.

[Frak N]

YES! Every forum site in the world lets you copy and paste unformatted text but you guys have to do it your own weird way that doesn't work!

All I want it to copy and paste my console logs as a comment and move on. But now because there's JSON in the logs, it ruins everything.

Why is it that you can't reproduce what Notepad can!?

[Christian Treptow]

Notepad is an application that displays a whole file and confluence is a webpage that displays code, this is just not comparable. You need a delimiter in this case and obviously the delimiter { code } is very common

[James Bromwell]

The delimiter " { code } " is not "very common", it's used in Atlassian products and basically nowhere else.  Even in Wikimedia markup you can format JSON and other common flavors of curly-brace-containing code pretty easily, though pasting HTML is a chore.

I've said it elsewhere and I'll say it again: Markdown won. It's just better *for discussing code* than any other lightweight markup language.  If Atlassian mostly made products to help librarians deal with books or automotive engineers design cars, the use of a markup language that makes it impossible to talk about JSON and other brace-heavy code snippets would be totally understandable.  But they don't -- they make software that's used almost exclusively for managing software projects.

This problem was embarrassing 10 years ago.  In 2019, it is inexcusable.

[Thomas]

Another vote for switching to Markdown!  It shouldn't take half an hour to find a way to get a close-curly-brace in a code section.  Backspace escaping should work for code sections like it does for underscores in underline sections.  The JIRA markup language is as inconsistent as it is buggy.

[Maciek Pawlowski]

This solution works if you don't mind your text being bold:

example 1:

{foo}

1. type the "*" character
2. type the "{" character
3. type your text
4. type the "*" character twice. This effectively ends a bold run and starts another bold run.
5. type the "}" character.
6. type the "*" character to end the bolding.

example 2:

{{code}}

1. type the "*" character
2. type the "{" character twice
3. type your text
4. type the "}" character.
5. type the "*" character twice. This effectively ends a bold run and starts another bold run.
6. type the "}" character.
7. type the "*" character to end the bolding.

[Joshua Pollak]

This absolutely works and was the only way I could enter the regex "[- 0-9_\p{Ll}\p{Lu}\p{Lt}]" into a JIRA comment ... though in raw it does look like this: *"[- 0-9_\p**{**Ll**}**\p**{**Lu**}**\p**{**Lt**}**\]"*

[Patrick McElhaney]

http://commonmark.org/

[Thomas]

With underscores, one can backslash an underscore mid-underline-section to get a literal underline there.  With double curly braces around code, one cannot backslash a close-curly-brace mid-code-section to get a literal close-curly-brace there.

Example without proper escaping:

{{my_dict = {}}}    renders as    my_dict = {}

Example attempting to use a backslash to escape the close-curly-brace (which doesn't work):

{{my_dict = {\}}}  renders as     my_dict = {}

Is there a sane alternative that works in this case?

I'm not seeing one in the other answers to this question.  The double-star trick mentioned in another answer does not work in the case of code sections (delineated with double curly braces).

The trick I have found to work is to close the curly brace section early, then put the single close-curly-brace in its own code section.  Thus, the workaround to get one close-curly-brace in your code section is the mind-numbing sequence of:

}}{{}}}

That'll put a close curly brace at the end of a code section.  You'll need to reopen the code-section with a {{ after all of that if you're not yet at the end of your code section.

Example of the functioning workaround:

{{my_dict = }}{{}}}     renders as      my_dict = {}

There really needs to be a better way.

[Rob Green]

The formatting in the JIRA editable content sections is disgraceful.

When pasting JSON snippets, I've been formatting code as monospace and inserting { and } to avoid double braces, however it randomly decides whether to print a single "{" or "}", or wrap sections in "{{ }}".

Every time it goes bezerk putting in "{{ }}" I have to go back and fix it, sometimes multiple times before it leaves it alone.

There are many, many good editors out there, why can't Atlassian get this right? Sites like StackOverflow have vastly better online editors. The behaviour of the Confluence and JIRA editors is quite different, why?

Does anyone have a reliable way of putting, say JSON into an editable section and have it not messed up? 

{
  "name":"foo",
  "age":23
}

[James Bromwell]

The simple fact is that lightweight markup for talking about code has been solved.  Markdown won, for good reason, and the nonsense that Atlassian uses lost.  It's terrible and the longer they insist on using it, the more embarrassing it will be when they finally give up and switch.

[Christian Treptow]

here is a dirty hack: insert a (invisible) space before or after the word "code":

​{code}
this is my {code​}
{code}

notice: i've inserted the invisible space after the word "code" within the code-block.

A drawback: copying this code probably prevents it from functioning correct.
You can also insert just a space and hope the person that copies notices it...

[Hossein Toussi [Atlassian]]

Hi,

In order to escape it, you can do this:

1- {

2- }

3- Then place the cursor in the middle of {} and type

Hope this works.

[Patrick McElhaney]

Thanks. That doesn't work.

[Thomas]

Can you please get a backslash to escape a close-curly-brace inside a code-section?

[John Burak]

Amen to that.

[Tasos Chalkias]

You could try doubling the curly braces. So, you type "{{" and "}}" instead of "{" and "}".

I am not sure if that will work in Crucible, but I know it works on JIRA comments and descriptions.

[Nathan Hinchey]

Is this still unresolved?

[Jan Heinz]

It is. We have Jira in our company, and the visual editor still corrupts the ending braces in a code block, and I haven't found a way to fix them.

[Stan Ry]

Still confirmed: no way to apply formatting with the {code} block.

Escaping curly braces worked fine for this simple example when typing commentary on the Text tab:

<script type "text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function() \{
var tblFilter = $('.tableFilterCbStyle');
tblFilter.find('.sortable-container').removeClass('sortable-container').sortable(
\{disabled: true\});
 \});
 </script>

This results in the visual representation (when switching to Visual tab) without formatting as a code block:

<script type "text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function() {
var tblFilter = $('.tableFilterCbStyle');
tblFilter.find('.sortable-container').removeClass('sortable-container').sortable(
{disabled: true});
 });
</script>