Type into/Type Secure Text does not type anything past a square bracket ("[", "]")

[system]

Why does my Type into/Type secure text activity does not type anything past a square bracket?

The square bracket (“[” and “]”) special characters are used by type into activities to indicate special keys on the keyboard (function keys, CTRL, ALT etc.). Thus the presence of these characters makes the respective activity think that the following text is a special key and attempts to translate the same. If any non standard special key/normal keys are passed post the same, the respective type based activity fails to translate the same and skips the text content post the square bracket.

As of now there are two solutions by which this issue can be handled:

1. Simulate the type into activity: There is a property by which the type into/type secure text into activities can send the simulated key strokes to the target application. This can be done by enabling the “Simulate type” property on the respective activity to allow the key strokes to be sent as is rather than treating the square bracket as a special case.

2. Escaping the square bracket: The square bracket can be escaped by using another square bracket, which will make the type into activity treat the same as a valid character rather than a special character. For example if the text is to be passed is “hello[world”, the same can be saved as “hello[[world” The first square bracket will escape the second square bracket and the bracket gets typed into, without needing any additional changes in the type into activity.

Note: This issue is prominent in cases where strong passwords, containing square brackets are used, and the type into activity misses the content after square bracket. Since the passwords are hidden from the user in most of the controls, it may be easy to miss the type into/type secure text activity skipping the content after the square bracket and resulting in a login failure.