An attribute of the Properties attribute type contains a text that represents a list of properties, where each property is a name/value pair.

The Properties attribute type is useful for representing a list of properties that may vary dynamically. If you have a fixed set of properties, you should normally represent each property as an attribute instead.

Here is an example of a list of properties that an attribute of the Properties attribute type can contain:

Each property must be on a separate line. A property line must consist of the property name, followed by a '=', followed by the property value. A specific property can occur at most once in the list. The name of a property cannot be empty, but the value can.

The name and value may be specified with or without quotes. When you use quotes, you can use the backslash character (\) to enter special characters:

• \n for line break.
• \r for carriage return.
• \f for form feed.
• \t for horizontal tab.
• \b for backspace.
• \" for double quote.
• \' for single quote.
• \\ for backslash itself.
• \uxxxx for the unicode character with encoding xxxx, where xxxx is four hexadecimal digits.

If you do not use quotes around the name/value, all spaces at the start and end of the name/value will be removed, you cannot specify an empty value, and you cannot use the backslash notation to enter special characters.

The list of properties can contain empty lines and comment lines. A comment line starts with two forward slash characters (//).