I am using the commons-configuration from apache commons library. I have a properties file which has properties like: blog_loc=http://my.blog.com blog_name="my blog name" I open the properties file, change the blog_name property and save the file. The following are the lines of code I use: PropertiesConfiguration propertyFile = new PropertiesConfiguration(propertyFileName); propertyFile.setProperty(blog_name, "blog name"); propertyFile.save(propertyFileName + ".out"); Unfortunately, in the output file certain characters get escaped as follows: blog_loc=http:\/\/my.blog.com blog_name=\"blog name\" Is there any way of preventing escaping of the above characters?