Question

I have little trouble understanding why variables aren’t working properly in the following code.

var welcomeMsg = $('#accountbar span.welcome_text').text(); // This returns "Welcome, Nick(account)      "
var cutdown = welcomeMsg.slice(0, -6); // This removes excessive spaces after (account) 
cutdown = cutdown.slice(cutdown.indexOf(",")+2,cutdown.indexOf("(")); // returns "Nick"

var username = cutdown;  // "Nick" //This doesn't work with last line of the script
//alert(username);
//var username = "Nick"  // but this works if it's used instead of  var username = cutdown;
//alert(username);

$("td:contains('"+username+"')").parent().css({
    "background" : "url('http://imagehost.com/forum/row1.png')"
});

It’s for a Greasemonkey script, if that matters.

Solved:
It seems that .trim is better way to delete excessive spaces around the wanted string.
The script works perfectly for me if this

var cutdown = welcomeMsg.slice(0, -6); // This removes excessive spaces after (account) 
cutdown = cutdown.slice(cutdown.indexOf(",")+2,cutdown.indexOf("("));

is replaced with this

var cutdown = welcomeMsg.slice(welcomeMsg.indexOf(",")+2,welcomeMsg.indexOf("("));
cutdown = cutdown.trim();

Answer 1

.trim fixed the problem when it is used instead of .slice