VRL REPL doesn't parse "\u" neither "\x" escapes

[ulidtko]

Hi! Per my reading of https://vector.dev/docs/reference/vrl/expressions/#string this should work:

$ "\u001b[95m Hello, string literals?"

error[E202]: syntax error
  ┌─ :1:1
  │
1 │ "\u001b[95m Hello, string literals?"
  │ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ unexpected error: invalid escape character: \u
  │
  = see language documentation at https://vrl.dev
  = try your code in the VRL REPL, learn more at https://vrl.dev/examples

as well as "-string literal with \x escape:

$ "\x33"

error[E202]: syntax error
  ┌─ :1:1
  │
1 │ "\x33"
  │ ^^^^^^ unexpected error: invalid escape character: \x
  │
  = see language documentation at https://vrl.dev
  = try your code in the VRL REPL, learn more at https://vrl.dev/examples

Yet, both give syntax error in the REPL.

Version

vector 0.44.0 (x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu 3cdc7c3 2025-01-13 21:26:04.735691656)

[ulidtko]

Somehow, the escapes do work in regex literals 🤷

So, with vector vrl --input, I managed to verify in REPL that this indeed strips ANSI colors escape sequences, as expected:

.message = string!(.message)
.message = replace(.message, r'\x1b\[[0-9;]*m', "")

[u1735067]

Probably a duplicate of #148?

However since I don't saw anyone mentioning it (outside of issue 6863 in vector), as a workaround decode_base16!("1b") can be used:

esc = decode_base16!("1b")
"{{esc}}[95mHello, string literals?{{esc}}[0m"

[pront]

Duplicate per #1275 (comment)