jQuery Forum

Broken in Safari for me…
I get:
[ hello world
 ] should be [hello world]

Use this: http://flesler.webs.com/IE7Trim/
Now I realize it fails.. and even fails on IE6.
--
Ariel Flesler
http://flesler.blogspot.com/

FF3 worked
IE7 doesn't work

I think different browsers, have different interpretations of what the
\s masks.
Thing is.. do we need to worry ?
--
Ariel Flesler
http://flesler.blogspot.com/

You're right, I think. Apparently Firefox interprets \s as: [1]
[\t\n\v\f\r
\u00a0\u2000\u2001\u2002\u2003\u2004\u2005\u2006\u2007\u2008\u2009\u200a
\u200b\u2028\u2029\u3000]
Replacing \s in either trim implementation by the above makes the test
work in Safari 3/Mac, FF3/Win, IE7/Win, IE6/Win, IE5.5/Win. But is it
worth the trouble?
~spicyj
[1]: http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Core_JavaScript_1.5_Reference:Global_Objects:RegExp

The specification defines the behavior (see below), so it's not just a
matter of interpretation. This is a defect in IE. The question is how
precise does jQuery wish to be in its adherence to cross-browser
compatibility? Practically, your question is relevant, do we need to
worry? The cost is a some increase in file size and a little more time
in execution speed--both important factors. As a purist, I would want
it to adhere to spec and be cross-browser equivalent (I've already
changed my copy to be so). As a realist, a compromise would be
acceptable. Common white-space should be properly handled. I found the
defect because non-breaking spaces were ignored. The compromise would
be: [\t\x0b\f\x20\xa0\n\r], thus ignoring the multi-byte white space
characters. I didn't verify the exact interpretation of "\s" for
multiple versions of IE, but perhaps [\s\xa0] or [\s\n\xa0] would also
work.
The appropriate snippets of the spec follow:
    ECMA-262 3rd Edition - December 1999
    15.10.2.12 CharacterClassEscape
    The production CharacterClassEscape :: s evaluates by returning the
set of characters containing the
    characters that are on the right-hand side of the WhiteSpace (7.2) or
LineTerminator (7.3)
    productions.
    7.2 White Space
    \u0009 Tab <TAB>
    \u000B Vertical Tab <VT>
    \u000C Form Feed <FF>
    \u0020 Space <SP>
    \u00A0 No-break space <NBSP>
    Other category “Zs” Any other Unicode
    “space separator”
    7.3 Line Terminator
    \u000A Line Feed <LF>
    \u000D Carriage Return <CR>
    \u2028 Line separator <LS>
    \u2029 Paragraph separator <PS>
    Unicode Regular Expressions http://unicode.org/reports/tr18/
    Unicode Regular Expression Guidelines http://unicode.org/reports/tr18/tr18-6d2.html
    UNICODE CHARACTER DATABASE http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/UCD.html
    Revision 5.1.0
    Date 2008-03-25
    http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/PropList.txt
    # PropList-5.1.0.txt
    # Date: 2008-03-20, 17:55:27 GMT [MD]
    0020 ; White_Space # Zs SPACE
    00A0 ; White_Space # Zs NO-BREAK SPACE
    1680 ; White_Space # Zs OGHAM SPACE MARK
    180E ; White_Space # Zs MONGOLIAN VOWEL SEPARATOR
    2000..200A ; White_Space # Zs [11] EN QUAD..HAIR SPACE
    202F ; White_Space # Zs NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE
    205F ; White_Space # Zs MEDIUM MATHEMATICAL SPACE
    3000 ; White_Space # Zs IDEOGRAPHIC SPACE
    Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_(punctuation)#Table_of_spaces