What's so special about the tag in relation to javascript

Question

<script type="text/javascript">
document.writeln("Hello");
document.writeln("I am new line!");
</script>

Output is:

Hello I am new line!

Code with pre

<pre>
<script type="text/javascript">
document.writeln("Hello World!");
document.writeln("Have a nice day!");
</script>
</pre>

Output is:

Hello
I am a new line!

What's so special about the <pre> tag? Is it only used for line breaks?

Answer 1

The pre tag works by preserving white-spaces, line feeds etc.

Your javascript is printing Hello. \n I am a new line.

Without the pre tag, HTML ignores the \n. With the pre tag, it honors the \n.

Answer 2

Normally, a newline in HTML text is meaningless; text lines are stitched together and flow into paragraphs. The <pre> tag preserves any newlines inside of it. This has nothing to do with Javascript; it's just the nature of HTML.

Answer 3

Your example doesn't really make sense (note the second example prints "Have a nice day!"), but I think I get the gist of what you're asking.

Yes, the <pre> tag preserves white space. Read the spec:

The pre element represents a block of preformatted text, in which structure is represented by typographic conventions rather than by elements.

http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html#the-pre-element

Answer 4

<pre> tag used to show the values line by line. 
ex: if u put print_r for particular array variable it shows results line by line..