Problem 1:

Can you escape keys or values in a properties file? Yes. Use backslash \ as the escape character.
So Hello World=foo should be written as Hello\ World=foo
Wikipedia has an excellent article

Problem 2:

You might most probably use the String replaceAll(String regex, String replacement) method. So how do you escape spaces?

// This Will NOT WORK !!
String escaped = “Hello World”.replaceAll(” “, “\\ “);

// This is the right way to do it, since we need to work with regex
String escaped = “Hello World”.replaceAll(“\\s”, “\\\\ “);

Here’s an example of converting a Mac Address 01:23:45:67:89:ab into a decimal number (1250999896491), using the MySQL conv() function.

The idea is select CONV(’0123456789ab’, 16, 10); – 01:23:45:67:89:ab without the :

select CONV(REPLACE(SUBSTR(’01:23:45:67:89:ab’, INSTR(’01:23:45:67:89:ab’, ‘(‘)+1, 17),’:',”),16,10);

Results In: 1250999896491