CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascriptascii
JManish
JManish

Reputation: 331

Difference between breaking and non breaking space ascii characters

I have two identical strings in javascript with some spaces. When I printed the ascii values by using str.charCodeAt(n) it is showing the values as 32 and 160. I googled the values and it is showing me as breaking and non breaking spaces. So can anybody explain what is this behaviour.

Upvotes: 5

Views: 12943

Answers (3)

jon Moon
jon Moon

Reputation: 11

Fun fact: SQL functions that operate on spaces (for example, LTRIM()) only operate on breaking spaces, not on non-breaking spaces. To get them to work on your character strings (say, for example, if you imported data where someone had used non-breaking spaces), you need to convert them to breaking spaces first.

Upvotes: 1

Stephen C
Stephen C

Reputation: 718758

The difference between a normal (breaking) space and a non-breaking space is that text display and typesetting software should not insert an automatic line break in place of a non-breaking space. (It is as if the non-breaking space joins the words before and after it into an unsplittable word.) By contrast, a regular space is treated as a possible place to break a line.

Having said that, the code 160 is actually outside of the range of regular (7-bit) ASCII. The interpretation of 160 as a non-breaking space (or NBSP) character comes from the Latin1 (ISO8859-1) character set. (In Extended ASCII, the code for the NBSP character is 255!)

References:

Upvotes: 8

zfor
zfor

Reputation: 383

A non-breaking space is a space that will not break into a new line. Two words separated by a non-breaking space will stick together and not break into a new line.

Breaking spaces on the other hand will break.

Upvotes: 3

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