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Browser deletes leading tab characters on each line when writing to child document

 
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I am using Javascript to write data in the form of nested arrays to another text document or browser window.



I want the output to look something like this:

[   'Text level 1',
   [   'Text level 2',
       [   'Text level 3'
       ],
       [   'More text level 3',
       ]
   ]
]

What it appears as is this:

[   'Text level 1',
[   'Text level 2',
[   'Text level 3'
],
[   'More text level 3',
]
]
]
]

which is much less readable! All the leading tab characters are deleted, although tab characters that follow non-whitespace characters are not deleted. (I should mention, I output <pre> and </pre> at the beginning and the end of the child document.) I tried outputting the tab characters as \t and , but I did not see any difference. I'm using the latest version of Safari for Mac.

Any suggestions? Is the problem browser-specific? Is there a Javascript method that would tell the browser to output the leading tab characters?

 
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Bob Grossman wrote:Is there a Javascript method that would tell the browser to output the leading tab characters?


That's not how HTML works. Whitespace between elements is collapsed, and tabs are not meaningful.

Either use space characters within <pre> if that's appropriate, or use CSS to add left margins as desired.
 
Bob Grossman
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Never mind ... a bad for loop was preventing the tab characters from being written to the document. All is good now. Sorry to waste your time.
 
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