Question

Using 2.9.0.1

<b time={None}>Hello</b>

=>

<b >Hello</b>

i.e. there is a space after the b in the starting tag.
This makes no sense from an XML perspective.

Is this “feature” supposed to happen?

Thanks.

Answer 1

It happens because of toString implementation of scala.xml.Elem, to be more specific
in object scala.xml.MetaInf method buildString which looks like following:

 def buildString(sb: StringBuilder): StringBuilder = {
  sb.append(' ')
  toString1(sb)
  next.buildString(sb)
 }

So it’s firstly adds a white space to string representation of element, and only after that appends next attribute, so if an attribute is present as class member but doesn’t have any string representation you’ll end up with one extra space before closing bracket