How is a non-breaking space represented in a JavaScript string?

Question

This apparently is not working:

X = $td.text();
if (X == '&nbsp;') {
  X = '';
}

Is there something about a non-breaking space or the ampersand that JavaScript doesn't like?

Remember that `.text()` strips out markup, thus I don't believe you're going to find ` ` in a non-markup result. — Brad Christie, Mar 08 '11 at 20:34
I may be wrong here, but doesn't text() expand html entities? — Dennis Kreminsky, Mar 08 '11 at 20:35
\u00A0 - unicode nbsp \x20 - ascii space
P1nbsp
In browser console: /\u00A0/.test($0.childNodes[0].nodeValue[0]) Display "true" — Ramil Shavaleev, Apr 08 '19 at 06:43

score 381 · Accepted Answer · edited Aug 28 '15 at 12:12

  is a HTML entity. When doing .text(), all HTML entities are decoded to their character values.

Instead of comparing using the entity, compare using the actual raw character:

var x = td.text();
if (x == '\xa0') { // Non-breakable space is char 0xa0 (160 dec)
  x = '';
}

Or you can also create the character from the character code manually it in its Javascript escaped form:

var x = td.text();
if (x == String.fromCharCode(160)) { // Non-breakable space is char 160
  x = '';
}

More information about String.fromCharCode is available here:

fromCharCode - MDC Doc Center

More information about character codes for different charsets are available here:

Windows-1252 Charset
UTF-8 Charset

Ordinary spaces are breaking, so it is '\x20', but better to use ' '. — Patrick Szalapski, May 02 '19 at 18:28

score 8 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 08 '11 at 20:36

8

Remember that .text() strips out markup, thus I don't believe you're going to find   in a non-markup result.

Made in to an answer....

var p = $('<p>').html('&nbsp;');
if (p.text() == String.fromCharCode(160) && p.text() == '\xA0')
    alert('Character 160');

Shows an alert, as the ASCII equivalent of the markup is returned instead.

answered Mar 08 '11 at 20:36

Brad Christie

100,477
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2

Using jQuery we can see that `$("

").text().charCodeAt()` gives `160` (unicode for nbsp) – cobbal Mar 08 '11 at 20:38

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 08 '11 at 20:35

That entity is converted to the char it represents when the browser renders the page. JS (jQuery) reads the rendered page, thus it will not encounter such a text sequence. The only way it could encounter such a thing is if you're double encoding entities.

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Mar 08 '11 at 20:40

0

The jQuery docs for text() says

Due to variations in the HTML parsers in different browsers, the text returned may vary in newlines and other white space.

I'd use $td.html() instead.

answered Mar 08 '11 at 20:40

Jacob Mattison

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This will add html tags to your page 's markup. For example, the string '' will be an html element. – Maxim Mandrik Dec 13 '19 at 08:01

How is a non-breaking space represented in a JavaScript string?

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