Question

Can any one explain me difference between   and   ?

I have html data stored in database in binary form and space in that can be either of   or   or sometimes  .

Also issue is when I convert this HTML to plain text using JSoup lib it is converting it properly but if I use String.contains(my string) method of java. It looks like the HTML data which is having   is different from which is having  . String is not found in either vice versa.

Example:

HTML1 : This is my test string

HTML2 : This is my test string

If I convert it to plain text using JSoup. It returns

HTML 1 : This is my test string

HTML 2 : This is my test string

But still both string are not same. Why is it so?

Answer 1

  is the classic space, the one you get when you hit your spacebar, represented by his HTML entity equivalent.

  and   represents the non-breaking space, often used to prevent collapse of multiple spaces togethers by the browser :

"    " => ” ” (collapsed into only one space)

"    " => ”    ” (not collapsed)

If you are parsing a string containing both classic and non-breaking spaces, you can safely replace one by the other.