# ElasticSearch escape character

**URL:** <https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-escape-character/163216>\
**Category:** Elasticsearch\
**Created:** [January 7, 2019, 1:19pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-escape-character/163216 "2019-01-07T13:19:18Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![surajdalvi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/85f322/32.png) [@surajdalvi](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/surajdalvi)\
**Post date:** [January 7, 2019, 1:19pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-escape-character/163216/1 "2019-01-07T13:19:18Z")

</div>

How I escape Unicode characters using a quer\_string query? For example, my documents consist the following data:

```auto
{
    "title":"@Sachin#$Tendular%^^*bestplayer*(tiger)!god~~ofcricket"
     } 

```

I am using the query\_string query in the following way:

```
{
  "query": {
    "query_string": {
      "fields": ["title"],
      "query": "*@Sachin#$Tendular%^^*bestplayer*(tiger)!god~~ofcricket*"
    }
  }
}

```

I am not getting any result so How I will escape the character to get a result?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![HenningAndersen](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/henningandersen/32/48188_2.png) [@HenningAndersen](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/HenningAndersen)\
**Post date:** [January 11, 2019, 11:33am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-escape-character/163216/2 "2019-01-11T11:33:46Z")

</div>

You can use \ (backslash) to escape characters. Beware that JSON also uses backslash as escape character and you will need to put in two backslashes like this:

```auto
{
  "query": {
    "query_string": {
      "fields": ["title"],
      "query": "\"@Sachin#$Tendular%\\^\\^\\*bestplayer\\*\\(tiger\\)\\!god\\~\\~ofcricket\""
    }
  }
}

```

Adding quotes around the text turns it into a single phrase query.

If you want to escape unicode characters, you can use the \u notation:

```auto
{
  "query": {
    "query_string": {
      "fields": ["title"],
      "query": "\u00e5"
    }
  }
}

```

See: [https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/6.5/query-dsl-query-string-query.html](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/6.5/query-dsl-query-string-query.html) for more information.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\
**Post date:** [February 8, 2019, 11:33am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/elasticsearch-escape-character/163216/3 "2019-02-08T11:33:52Z")

</div>

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