how to escape a semicolon?

[mmarchese]

I'm trying to build a string with a semicolon in it.  Is it possible? 

Here are my failed attempts, which all produce this error: "Unknown statement: World".

Let a = 'Hello ; World';
Trace $(a);
Let a = 'Hello ' & chr(59) & ' World';
Trace $(a);
Let a = Replace('hello ~ World', '~', chr(59));
Trace $(a);
Let a = 'Hello ;; World';
Trace $(a);
Let a = 'Hello \; World';
Trace $(a);

The last 2 were just desperate grasps at straws based on the fact that quotes can be escaped by doubling them up (even though the syntax highlighter has no clue).

I also tried using Set instead of Let and then doing the Let in a second step, with the same outcome:

Set a = 'hello ' & chr(59) & ' there';
Let b = $(a);
Trace $(b);

For reference, the same statements work fine if I use a colon instead.  They print "Hello : World".

Let a = 'Hello : World';
Trace $(a);
Let a = 'Hello ' & chr(58) & ' World';
Trace $(a);
Let a = Replace('Hello ~ World', '~', chr(58));
Trace $(a);

[sunny_talwar]

This works on the front end, are you specifically looking to make this work in the script?

SET a = 'Hello @ World';

SET b = '=Replace(''$(a)'', ''@'', '';'')';

TRACE $(a);

TRACE $(b);

[mmarchese]

I copied and pasted that in and it does not work for me.  Everything after the final closing parenthesis in the 2nd line is highlighted in red.  Maybe this was expected?  I don't know - not sure what you mean by the front end.

The end goal is to use it in a load statement to make 3 new columns based on 2 existing columns.  The new columns are HTML for use with an extension that shows images in a table (and also accepts raw HTML).  The problem is that the HTML has a semicolon in it and Qlik hates it.

I was trying to make a little function to do the string substitution and then call the function 3 times.  A simplified example:

Set GeneratePhotoHTML = 'Pretend this ' & $1 & ' is ' & $2 & ' ;HTML';
SomeTable:
Load
    ProblemNo,
    $(GeneratePhotoHTML(ProblemNo, 'A')) AS PhotoA,
    $(GeneratePhotoHTML(ProblemNo, 'B')) AS PhotoB,
    $(GeneratePhotoHTML(ProblemNo, 'C')) AS PhotoC
SELECT
...

I got this idea from here:

User-defined functions equivalent in Qlik Sense

[Gysbert_Wassenaar]

Looks like a bug to me.

This seems to work:

temp:LOAD 'Hello ; World' as Value AutoGenerate 1;

LET a = peek('Value',-1,'temp');

DROP TABLE temp;

[mmarchese]

It doesn't work for me.  I still get the error "Unknown statement: World".

[Gysbert_Wassenaar]

Which version of Qlik Sense?

September 2017 release works for me here.

[sunny_talwar]

It seems that setting the variable isn't erroring out, it is using the variable which is causing the trouble, is that right?

Running this along did not throw any error

LET a = 'Hello ; World';

[mmarchese]

I have June 2017.

[mmarchese]

Yes, you are correct.  It seems that using the variable inside of $( ) triggers the error.

I finally decided to give up on using trace for debugging and instead just try loading my data and seeing what happened.

Let a = 'Hey ; there ';
Set GeneratePhotoHTML = 'Pretend this ' & $1 & ' is ' & $2 & ' ;HTML';
SomeTable:
Load
    ProblemNo,
    $(GeneratePhotoHTML(ProblemNo, 'A')) AS PhotoA,  // I was not expecting this to work, but it does
    'Hello ; World' AS PhotoB,  // also works
    $(a) AS PhotoC;  // does not work
SELECT
...

I'm going to put the real code in there and make sure it still works.  I might be good to go despite this bug.  I'm confused but not at all surprised.  I already knew that Qlik's set/let/string/number/literal/variable/dollar-sign-expansion/trace system was a total mess.

[NoEyeDeer]

Bit late, but to be complete and as a reference for other people landing here ... did you all realize that mmarchese used the expanding mechanism after a "TRACE"? Trace does accept everything "up to the next semicolon" as argument. So - indeed - the problem was the way mmarchese used the $()-expansion of the variable. And this also applies to the LOAD statement examples. In both cases single quotes surrounding the $() - like "Trace '$(a)';" or "'$(GeneratePhotoHTML(ProblemNo, ''A''))' AS PhotoA," (double ' inside '...' to encode a single ' inside a string) - should fix the problem (did not check that but am quite sure). However Trace will include the single quotes into it's logging output - a little fly in the ointment so to speak (I found this searching for an Idea to fix that).