javascriptwhitespace

JavaScript ignores extra spaces?

In this JavaScript quiz at WsCube Tech there was a question whether JavaScript ignores extra spaces. The correct answer was “False”.

7. JavaScript ignores extra spaces: ◉ True ✗ — ⭕ False ✓

Isn’t JavaScript white-space independent? I have read in many blogs that it is. So why is my answer wrong?

Solution

  • I seriously wouldn’t trust that site…

    Directly conflicting answers

    That’s the short, sufficient answer I could give, but I’d like to say two other things:

    Firstly, JavaScript doesn’t ignore spaces within strings:

    var str = "Hello                World";

    This string has 16 spaces and they won’t get ignored just like that. However, in-between some operators, keywords and tokens, JavaScript does ignore spaces:

    var   test  = [ 0 , 1  ,     3    ]       .  slice  (      2  )      ;

    This line is parsed as

    var test=[0,1,3].slice(2);

    Still, the space between var and test isn’t ignored. Not all spaces are equal. This quiz question cannot be answered in its current form — well, or two forms…

    Secondly, that quiz has a lot of inconsistencies, false information, outdated information and promotes bad practice. I’ve just sent them a huge list of things wrong with the quiz…

    It’s much safer to stick to a more “trusted” site like the Mozilla Developer Network.