Javascript substring doesn't return the correct string

Question

i was manipulating the text in this document http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november14/brook/11brook.html, while i noticed something strange. I was looking at the beginning of the article, in particular here:

Michelle Brook
The Content Mine
[email protected]
...

(I am using jquery xpath)

var string=$("document").xpath("form[1]/table[3]/tr/td/table[5]/tr/td/table[1]/tr/td[2]/p[2]").html();
var new_string=string.substring(0,14);

I would expect that new_string was "Michelle Brook", but it was "Michelle Bro". Why that? Is there a particular char that makes string.substring() fail?

Why don't you console.log() the string before you call .substring() and see what it really contains? — Pointy
– Pointy, Commented Jan 25, 2016 at 15:32
I suspect there are several sequential instances of whitespace that gets collapsed when rendered, but still exist in the source string. — Frédéric Hamidi
– Frédéric Hamidi, Commented Jan 25, 2016 at 15:33
Well, there is your answer. You have a linefeed as your first character. I'm guessing .charCodeAt(1) is also another odd character (10,13,or 8206) — Robert McKee
– Robert McKee, Commented Jan 25, 2016 at 15:53

Robert McKee · Accepted Answer · 2016-01-25 15:56:42Z

1

Use the following to remove all leading and trailing whitespace from your string before trying to substring it:

var new_string=string.replace(/^\s*/, '').replace(/\s*$/, '').substring(0,14);

answered Jan 25, 2016 at 15:56

Robert McKee

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7 Comments

SctALE Over a year ago

I have understand the problem: does your code delete all character that can make substring() fail?

Robert McKee Over a year ago

substring isn't failing.

SctALE Over a year ago

using that replace, in different parts of the document i can see some   word: why? how can i delete them?

Robert McKee Over a year ago

I would suggest using an HTML parser instead of trying to use XPATH to parse your document.

Sabaz Over a year ago

string.trim().substring(0,14); is shorter

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