Question

Why event.which doesn’t return 13 (CR) or 10 (LF) depending on the operating system?

$('#something').on('keypress', function (event) {
  switch (event.which) {
  case 13:
    ...
    break;
  }    
});

UPDATE

I know that Carriage return is equal to 13 in ASCII code. But why Carriage return is common to all operating systems but produces different outputs in text (i.e. LF, CR, CR LF)?

Answer 1

Because that is the ASCII code for return…

The table:

Look at number 13:

13     015     0D     00001101     CR     
     Carriage Return

Read this:

The actual codes representing a newline vary across operating systems, which can be a problem when exchanging text files between systems with different newline representations.

Making the value fixed no matter which OS is being used, makes our life a lot easier and letting us focus on the real issues we need to do.