Quoting

By default, field values containing spaces or special characters are wrapped in Go-style double quotes ("hello world"). This behaviour can be customised with SetQuote.

Quote Modes

// Default: only quote when needed
clog.Info().Str("reason", "timeout").Str("msg", "hello world").Msg("test")
// INF ℹ️ test reason=timeout msg="hello world"

// Always quote string values
clog.SetQuote(clog.QuoteAlways)
clog.Info().Str("reason", "timeout").Msg("test")
// INF ℹ️ test reason="timeout"

// Never quote
clog.SetQuote(clog.QuoteNever)
clog.Info().Str("msg", "hello world").Msg("test")
// INF ℹ️ test msg=hello world

Custom Quote Character

Use a different character for both sides by passing the same rune twice:

clog.SetQuoteChars('\'', '\'')
clog.Info().Str("msg", "hello world").Msg("test")
// INF ℹ️ test msg='hello world'

Asymmetric Quote Characters

Use different opening and closing characters:

clog.SetQuoteChars('«', '»')
clog.Info().Str("msg", "hello world").Msg("test")
// INF ℹ️ test msg=«hello world»

clog.SetQuoteChars('[', ']')
clog.Info().Str("msg", "hello world").Msg("test")
// INF ℹ️ test msg=[hello world]

Smart Quoting

Enable smart quoting to pick a delimiter per value instead of escaping. Each quoted value is wrapped in the first delimiter that does not occur in it, so the output stays escape-free:

clog.SetSmartQuotes(true)
clog.Info().Str("msg", `plain value`).Msg("test")
// INF ℹ️ test msg="plain value"

clog.Info().Str("msg", `say "hi"`).Msg("test")
// INF ℹ️ test msg='say "hi"'

clog.Info().Str("msg", `it's a "test"`).Msg("test")
// INF ℹ️ test msg=`it's a "test"`

The default preference order is ", then ', then `. When a value contains all of them (or a backslash or a non-printable character, which cannot be wrapped literally), smart quoting falls back to Go-style escaped quoting via strconv.Quote.

Custom Preference Order

Override the order with SetSmartQuoteChars. Each QuotePair may use distinct opening and closing runes (a zero Close mirrors Open):

clog.SetSmartQuotes(true)
clog.SetSmartQuoteChars(
	clog.QuotePair{Open: '«', Close: '»'},
	clog.QuotePair{Open: '['},
)
clog.Info().Str("msg", "hello world").Msg("test")
// INF ℹ️ test msg=«hello world»

clog.Info().Str("msg", "a » b").Msg("test")
// INF ℹ️ test msg=[a » b]

Passing no pairs restores the default order. Smart quoting takes precedence over SetQuoteChars.

Styling Delimiters

By default the quote delimiters share the styling of the value they wrap. Set a FieldQuote style (see Styles) to control them independently:

// Replace: delimiters are dim, regardless of the value's color.
clog.SetStyles(&style.Config{
  FieldQuote: &style.QuoteStyle{
    Style: lipgloss.NewStyle().Faint(true),
  },
})

// Inherit: delimiters keep the value's color but add their own attributes.
clog.SetStyles(&style.Config{
  FieldQuote: &style.QuoteStyle{
    Style:   lipgloss.NewStyle().Bold(true),
    Inherit: true,
  },
})

With Inherit set, the value’s resolved style (which varies by type - string, error, number - and by per-key/per-value overrides) is used as the base, and only the attributes you set on Style are layered on top.

Quoting applies to individual field values and to elements within string and []any slices. All quoting settings are inherited by sub-loggers. Pass 0 to reset to the default (strconv.Quote).