Can I escape braces in a java MessageFormat?

You can put them inside single quotes e.g.

'{'return {2};'}'

See here for more details.

Wow. Surprise! The documentation for MessageFormat knows the answer:

Within a String, "''" represents a single quote. A QuotedString can contain arbitrary characters except single quotes; the surrounding single quotes are removed. An UnquotedString can contain arbitrary characters except single quotes and left curly brackets. Thus, a string that should result in the formatted message "'{0}'" can be written as "'''{'0}''" or "'''{0}'''".

Use single quotes:

MessageFormat.format("  public {0} get{1}() '{'return {2};'}'\n\n",
                     type, upperCamel, lowerCamel);

If you want to actually use a single quote, just double it. The JavaDoc for MessageFormat gives this somewhat complicated example:

Thus, a string that should result in the formatted message "'{0}'" can be written as "'''{'0}''" or "'''{0}'''".

This is '' for a single quote, then '{' for an escaped brace, then 0, '}' for the closing brace and '' for the closing quote.

you can use this regex with perl or any other language to escape curly brackets and single quotes (x27). It does not touch any placeholder e.g. {0}:

echo "#  'single' quote test \n\n public {0} get{1}() {return {2};}\n\n" | perl -pe 's/\x27/\x27\x27/g; s/\{([^0-9])/\x27\{\x27$1/g; s/([^0-9])\}/$1\x27\}\x27/g'