A property file is a file in a specific format with key/value pairs.
The most common syntax is where a property file contains key/value pairs in the format:
```
animal=dolphin
```
There’s more to it than that. There are actually two other formats that you can use to express these pairs.
```
animal:dolphin
animal dolphin
```
Some other formats are,
* If a line begins with # or !, it is a comment.
* Spaces before or after the separator character are ignored.
* Spaces at the beginning of a line are ignored.
* Spaces at the end of a line are not ignored.
* End a line with a backslash if you want to break the line for readability.
* You can use normal Java escape characters like \t and \n .