For the first time today, I had to write a Gherkin behavior scenario in which table text needed to use the pipe character “|”. I wanted a generic step that would find and click web page links by name, and one of the link names had the pipe in it! The first version of the step I wrote looked like this:

When the user follows the links:
  | link              |
  | Category          |
  | Sub-Category      |
  | Index|Description |

Naturally, this step didn’t parse – the “|” was parsed as a table delimiter instead of the intended link text. I could have rewritten the step to search for partial link text, or I could have done a key-value lookup, but I wanted to keep the step simple and direct.

The solution was simple: escape the pipe character “|” with a backslash character “\”. Easy! Thanks, StackOverflow! The updated table looks like this:

When the user follows the links:
 | link               |
 | Category           |
 | Sub-Category       |
 | Index\|Description |

“\|” works for both step tables and scenario outline example tables. It looks like it is fairly standard for test frameworks that use Gherkin. I verified that Cucumber-JVM and SpecFlow support it, and it looks like Cucumber for Ruby does as well. It looks like behave will support it in 1.2.6.

After learning this trick, I updated the BDD 101: The Gherkin Language page.

Note that backslash escape sequences won’t work for quotes in Gherkin steps. Quotes in steps are merely conventions and not part of the Gherkin language standard.