Per .properties file format there are several separators possible:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.properties :

"Several formats are possible for each line, including key=value, key = value, key:value, and key value."

Thus they should be escaped when used as not a separator. I faced a problem with colon. My properties file contains a json string:

PARAMETERS=

it is generated by Groovy Properties and properly escaped. However when this gets injected using EnvInject plugin the colon sing is not unescaped back.