Whitespace character

In computer programming, whitespace is any character or series of characters that represent horizontal or vertical space in typography. When rendered, a whitespace character does not correspond to a visible mark, but typically does occupy an area on a page. For example, the common whitespace symbol U+0020   SPACE (also ASCII 32) represents a blank space punctuation character in text, used as a word divider in Western scripts.

Overview

Relative widths of various spaces in Unicode

With many keyboard layouts, a horizontal whitespace character may be entered through the use of a spacebar. Horizontal whitespace may also be entered on many keyboards through the use of the Tab ↹ key, although the length of the space may vary. Vertical whitespace is a bit more varied as to how it is encoded, but the most obvious in typing is the ↵ Enter result which creates a 'newline' code sequence in applications programs. Older keyboards might instead say Return, abbreviating the typewriter keyboard meaning 'Carriage-Return' which generated an electromechanical return to the left stop (CR code in ASCII-hex &0D;) and a line feed or move to the next line (LF code in ASCII-hex &0A;); in some applications these were independently used to draw text cell based displays on monitors or for printing on tractor-guided printers—which might also contain reverse motions/positioning code sequences allowing text-based output devices to achieve more sophisticated output. Many early computer games used such codes to draw a screen (e.g. Kingdom of Kroz), and word processing software would use this to produce printed effects such as bold, underline, and strikeout.

The term "whitespace" is based on the resulting appearance on ordinary paper. However they are coded inside an application, whitespace can be processed the same as any other character code and programs can do the proper action as defined for the context in which they occur.

Definition and ambiguity

The most common whitespace characters may be typed via the space bar or the tab key. Depending on context, a line-break generated by the return or enter key may be considered whitespace as well.

Unicode

The table below lists the twenty-five characters defined as whitespace ("WSpace=Y", "WS") characters in the Unicode Character Database.[1] Seventeen use a definition of whitespace consistent with the algorithm for bidirectional writing ("Bidirectional Character Type=WS") and are known as "Bidi-WS" characters. The remaining characters may also be used, but are not of this "Bidi" type.

Note: Depending on the browser and fonts used to view the following table, not all spaces may be displayed properly.

Unicode characters with property White_Space=yes[lower-alpha 1][lower-alpha 2]
Name	Code point		Width box	May break?	In IDN?	Script	Block	General category	Notes
character tabulation	U+0009	9		Yes	No	Common	Basic Latin	Other, control	HT, Horizontal Tab. HTML/XML named entity: 	, LaTeX: '\tab'
line feed	U+000A	10	Is a line-break			Common	Basic Latin	Other, control	LF, Line feed. HTML/XML named entity: 

line tabulation	U+000B	11	Is a line-break			Common	Basic Latin	Other, control	VT, Vertical Tab
form feed	U+000C	12	Is a line-break			Common	Basic Latin	Other, control	FF, Form feed
carriage return	U+000D	13	Is a line-break			Common	Basic Latin	Other, control	CR, Carriage return
space	U+0020	32		Yes	No	Common	Basic Latin	Separator, space	Most common (normal ASCII space)
next line	U+0085	133	Is a line-break			Common	Latin-1 Supplement	Other, control	NEL, Next line
no-break space	U+00A0	160		No	No	Common	Latin-1 Supplement	Separator, space	Non-breaking space: identical to U+0020, but not a point at which a line may be broken. HTML/XML named entity:  , LaTeX: '\ '
ogham space mark	U+1680	5760		Yes	No	Ogham	Ogham	Separator, space	Used for interword separation in Ogham text. Normally a vertical line in vertical text or a horizontal line in horizontal text, but may also be a blank space in "stemless" fonts. Requires an Ogham font.
en quad	U+2000	8192		Yes	No	Common	General Punctuation	Separator, space	Width of one en. U+2002 is canonically equivalent to this character; U+2002 is preferred.
em quad	U+2001	8193		Yes	No	Common	General Punctuation	Separator, space	Also known as "mutton quad". Width of one em. U+2003 is canonically equivalent to this character; U+2003 is preferred.
en space	U+2002	8194		Yes	No	Common	General Punctuation	Separator, space	Also known as "nut". Width of one en. U+2000 En Quad is canonically equivalent to this character; U+2002 is preferred. HTML/XML named entity:  , LaTeX: '\enspace'
em space	U+2003	8195		Yes	No	Common	General Punctuation	Separator, space	Also known as "mutton". Width of one em. U+2001 Em Quad is canonically equivalent to this character; U+2003 is preferred. HTML/XML named entity:  , LaTeX: '\quad'
three-per-em space	U+2004	8196		Yes	No	Common	General Punctuation	Separator, space	Also known as "thick space". One third of an em wide. HTML/XML named entity:  
four-per-em space	U+2005	8197		Yes	No	Common	General Punctuation	Separator, space	Also known as "mid space". One fourth of an em wide. HTML/XML named entity:  
six-per-em space	U+2006	8198		Yes	No	Common	General Punctuation	Separator, space	One sixth of an em wide. In computer typography, sometimes equated to U+2009.
figure space	U+2007	8199		No	No	Common	General Punctuation	Separator, space	Figure space. In fonts with monospaced digits, equal to the width of one digit. HTML/XML named entity:  
punctuation space	U+2008	8200		Yes	No	Common	General Punctuation	Separator, space	As wide as the narrow punctuation in a font, i.e. the advance width of the period or comma.[2] HTML/XML named entity:  
thin space	U+2009	8201		Yes	No	Common	General Punctuation	Separator, space	Thin space; one-fifth (sometimes one-sixth) of an em wide. Recommended for use as a thousands separator for measures made with SI units. Unlike U+2002 to U+2008, its width may get adjusted in typesetting.[3] HTML/XML named entity:  ; LaTeX: '\,'
hair space	U+200A	8202		Yes	No	Common	General Punctuation	Separator, space	Thinner than a thin space. HTML/XML named entity:   (does not work in all browsers)
line separator	U+2028	8232	Is a line-break			Common	General Punctuation	Separator, line
paragraph separator	U+2029	8233	Is a line-break			Common	General Punctuation	Separator, paragraph
narrow no-break space	U+202F	8239		No	No	Common	General Punctuation	Separator, space	Narrow no-break space. Similar in function to U+00A0 No-Break Space. When used with Mongolian, its width is usually one third of the normal space; in other context, its width sometimes resembles that of the Thin Space (U+2009).
medium mathematical space	U+205F	8287		Yes	No	Common	General Punctuation	Separator, space	MMSP. Used in mathematical formulae. Four-eighteenths of an em.[4] In mathematical typography, the widths of spaces are usually given in integral multiples of an eighteenth of an em, and 4/18 em may be used in several situations, for example between the a and the + and between the + and the b in the expression a + b.[5] HTML/XML named entity:  
ideographic space	U+3000	12288		Yes	No	Common	CJK Symbols and Punctuation	Separator, space	As wide as a CJK character cell (fullwidth). Used, for example, in tai tou.

Related Unicode characters property White_Space=no
Name	Code point		Width box	May break?	In IDN?	Script	Block	General category	Notes
mongolian vowel separator	U+180E	6158	᠎	Yes	No	Mongolian	Mongolian	Other, Format	MVS. A narrow space character, used in Mongolian to cause the final two characters of a word to take on different shapes.[6] It is no longer classified as space character (i.e. in Zs category) in Unicode 6.3.0, even though it was in previous versions of the standard.
zero width space	U+200B	8203	​	Yes	No	?	General Punctuation	Other, Format	ZWSP, zero-width space. Used to indicate word boundaries to text processing systems when using scripts that do not use explicit spacing. It is similar to the soft hyphen, with the difference that the latter is used to indicate syllable boundaries, and should display a visible hyphen when the line breaks at it. HTML/XML named entity: ​[7][lower-alpha 3]
zero width non-joiner	U+200C	8204	‌	Yes	Context-dependent[12]	?	General Punctuation	Other, Format	ZWNJ, zero-width non-joiner. When placed between two characters that would otherwise be connected, a ZWNJ causes them to be printed in their final and initial forms, respectively. HTML/XML named entity: ‌
zero width joiner	U+200D	8205	‍	Yes	Context-dependent[13]	?	General Punctuation	Other, Format	ZWJ, zero-width joiner. When placed between two characters that would otherwise not be connected, a ZWJ causes them to be printed in their connected forms. Can also be used to display joining forms in isolation. Depending on whether a ligature or conjunct is expected by default, can either induce (as in emoji and in Sinhala) or suppress (as in Devanagari) substitution with a single glyph, whilst still permitting use of individual joining forms (unlike ZWNJ). HTML/XML named entity: ‍
word joiner	U+2060	8288	⁠	No	No	?	General Punctuation	Other, Format	WJ, word joiner. Similar to U+200B, but not a point at which a line may be broken. HTML/XML named entity: ⁠
zero width non-breaking space	U+FEFF	65279		No	No	?	Arabic Presentation Forms-B	Other, Format	Zero-width non-breaking space. Used primarily as a Byte Order Mark. Use as an indication of non-breaking is deprecated as of Unicode 3.2; see U+2060 instead.

White_Space is a binary Unicode property.[lower-alpha 4] "Unicode 13.0 UCD: PropList.txt". 2019-11-27. Retrieved 2020-03-12. Although ​ is one HTML5 named entity for U+200B, the additional names NegativeMediumSpace, NegativeThickSpace, NegativeThinSpace and NegativeVeryThinSpace (which are names used in the Wolfram Language for negative-advance spaces, which it maps to the Private Use Area)[8][9][10][11] are also defined by HTML5 as aliases for U+200B (e.g. ​).[7] "Unicode Standard Annex #44, Unicode Character Database".

Substitute images

Unicode also provides some visible characters that can be used to represent various whitespace characters, in contexts where a visible symbol must be displayed:

Unicode space-illustrating characters (visible)

Code	Decimal	Name	Block	Display	Description
U+00B7	183	Middle dot	Latin-1 Supplement	·	Interpunct Named entity: ·
U+21A1	8609	Downwards two headed arrow	Arrows	↡	ECMA-17 / ISO 2047 symbol for form feed (page break)[14]
U+2261	8810	Identical to	Mathematical Operators	≡	Amongst other uses, is the ECMA-17 / ISO 2047 symbol for line feed[14]
U+237D	9085	Shouldered open box	Miscellaneous Technical	⍽	Used to indicate a NBSP
U+23CE	9166	Return symbol	Miscellaneous Technical	⏎	Symbol for a return key, which enters a line break
U+2409	9225	Symbol for horizontal tabulation	Control Pictures	␉	Substitutes for a tab character
U+240A	9226	Symbol for line feed	Control Pictures	␊	Substitutes for a line feed
U+240B	9227	Symbol for vertical tabulation	Control Pictures	␋	Substitutes for a vertical tab (line tab)
U+240C	9228	Symbol for form feed	Control Pictures	␌	Substitutes for a form feed (page break)
U+240D	9229	Symbol for carriage return	Control Pictures	␍	Substitutes for a carriage return
U+2420	9248	Symbol for space	Control Pictures	␠	Substitutes for an ASCII space
U+2422	9250	Blank symbol	Control Pictures	␢	aka "substitute blank",[15] used in BCDIC,[15] EBCDIC,[15] ASCII-1963[15][16] etc. as a symbol for the word separator
U+2423	9251	Open box	Control Pictures	␣	Used in block letter handwriting at least since the 1980s when it is necessary to explicitly indicate the number of space characters (e.g. when programming with pen and paper). Used in a textbook (published 1982, 1984,1985, 1988 by Springer-Verlag) on Modula-2,[17] a programming language where space codes require explicit indication. Also used in the keypad[n 1] of the Texas Instruments' TI-8x series of graphing calculators. Named entity: ␣
U+2424	9252	Symbol for newline	Control Pictures	␤	Substitutes for a line break
U+25B3	9651	White up-pointing triangle	Geometric Shapes	△	Amongst other uses, is the ECMA-17 / ISO 2047 symbol for the ASCII space[14]
U+2A5B	10843	Logical Or with middle stem	Supplemental Mathematical Operators	⩛	Amongst other uses, is the ECMA-17 / ISO 2047 symbol for vertical tab (line tab)[14]
U+2AAA	10922	Smaller than	Supplemental Mathematical Operators	⪪	Amongst other uses, is the ECMA-17 / ISO 2047 symbol for carriage return[14]
U+2AAB	10923	Larger than	Supplemental Mathematical Operators	⪫	Amongst other uses, is the ECMA-17 / ISO 2047 symbol for the tab character[14]
U+3037	12343	Ideographic Telegraph Line Feed Separator Symbol	CJK Symbols and Punctuation	〷	Graphic used for code 9999 in Chinese telegraph code, representing a line feed

1. Above the zero "0" or negative "(‒)" key.

Exact space

• The Cambridge Z88 provided a special "exact space" (code point 160 aka 0xA0) (invokable by key shortcut ⌑+SPACE,[18]) displayed as "..." by the operating system's display driver.[19][20] It was therefore also known as "dot space" in conjunction with BBC BASIC.[19][20]
• Under code point 224 (0xE0) the computer also provided a special three-character-cells-wide SPACE symbol "SPC" (analogous to Unicode's single-cell-wide U+2420).[19][20]

Non-space blanks

• The Braille Patterns Unicode block contains U+2800 ⠀ BRAILLE PATTERN BLANK (HTML ⠀), a Braille pattern with no dots raised. Some fonts display the character as a fixed-width blank, however the Unicode standard explicitly states that it does not act as a space.
• Unicode's coverage of the Korean alphabet includes several code points which represent the absence of a written letter, and thus do not display a glyph:
  • Unicode includes a Hangul Filler character in the Hangul Compatibility Jamo block (U+3164 ㅤ HANGUL FILLER (HTML ㅤ)). This is classified as a letter, but displayed as an empty space, like a Hangul block containing no jamo. It is used in KS X 1001 Hangul combining sequences to introduce them or denote the absence of a letter in a position, but not in Unicode's combining jamo system.[21]
  • Unicode's combining jamo system uses similar Hangul Choseong Filler and Hangul Jungseong Filler characters to denote the absence of a letter in initial or medial position within a syllable block, which are included in the Hangul Jamo block (U+115F ᅟ HANGUL CHOSEONG FILLER (HTML ᅟ), U+1160 ᅠ HANGUL JUNGSEONG FILLER (HTML ᅠ)).[22]
  • Additionally, a Halfwidth Hangul Filler is included in the Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms (U+FFA0 ﾠ HALFWIDTH HANGUL FILLER (HTML ﾠ)), which is used when mapping from encodings which include characters from both Johab (or Wansung) and N-byte Hangul (or its EBCDIC counterpart), such as IBM-933, which includes both Johab and EBCDIC fillers.[23][24]

Whitespace and digital typography

On-screen display

Text editors, word processors, and desktop publishing software differ in how they represent whitespace on the screen, and how they represent spaces at the ends of lines longer than the screen or column width. In some cases, spaces are shown simply as blank space; in other cases they may be represented by an interpunct or other symbols. Many different characters (described below) could be used to produce spaces, and non-character functions (such as margins and tab settings) can also affect whitespace.

Variable-width general-purpose space

In computer character encodings, there is a normal general-purpose space (Unicode character U+0020) whose width will vary according to the design of the typeface. Typical values range from 1/5 em to 1/3 em (in digital typography an em is equal to the nominal size of the font, so for a 10-point font the space will probably be between 2 and 3.3 points). Sophisticated fonts may have differently sized spaces for bold, italic, and small-caps faces, and often compositors will manually adjust the width of the space depending on the size and prominence of the text.

In addition to this general-purpose space, it is possible to encode a space of a specific width. See the table below for a complete list.

Hair spaces around dashes

Em dashes used as parenthetical dividers, and en dashes when used as word joiners, are usually set continuous with the text.[25] However, such a dash can optionally be surrounded with a hair space, U+200A, or thin space, U+2009. The hair space can be written in HTML by using the numeric character references   or  , or the named entity  , but is not universally supported in browsers yet, as of 2016. The thin space is named entity   and numeric references   or  . These spaces are much thinner than a normal space (except in a monospaced (non-proportional) font), with the hair space being the thinner of the two.

Normal space versus hair and thin spaces (as rendered by your browser)

Normal space with em dash	left — right
Thin space with em dash	left — right
Hair space with em dash	left — right
No space with em dash	left—right

Computing applications

Programming languages

In programming language syntax, spaces are frequently used to explicitly separate tokens. In most languages multiple whitespace characters are treated the same as a single whitespace character (outside of quoted strings); such languages are called free-form. In a few languages, including Haskell, occam, ABC, and Python, whitespace and indentation are used for syntactical purposes. In the satirical language called Whitespace, whitespace characters are the only valid characters for programming, while any other characters are ignored.

Excessive use of whitespace, especially trailing whitespace at the end of lines, is considered a nuisance. However correct use of whitespace can make the code easier to read and help group related logic.

Most languages only recognize ASCII characters as whitespace, or in some cases Unicode newlines as well, but not most of the characters listed above. The C language defines whitespace characters to be "space, horizontal tab, new-line, vertical tab, and form-feed".[26] The HTTP network protocol requires different types of whitespace to be used in different parts of the protocol, such as: only the space character in the status line, CRLF at the end of a line, and "linear whitespace" in header values.[27]

Command line user interfaces

In commands processed by command processors, e.g., in scripts and typed in, the space character can cause problems as it has two possible functions: as part of a command or parameter, or as a parameter or name separator. Ambiguity can be prevented either by prohibiting embedded spaces, or by enclosing a name with embedded spaces between quote characters.

Markup languages

Some markup languages, such as SGML, preserve whitespace as written.

Web markup languages such as XML and HTML treat whitespace characters specially, including space characters, for programmers' convenience. One or more space characters read by conforming display-time processors of those markup languages are collapsed to 0 or 1 space, depending on their semantic context. For example, double (or more) spaces within text are collapsed to a single space, and spaces which appear on either side of the "=" that separates an attribute name from its value have no effect on the interpretation of the document. Element end tags can contain trailing spaces, and empty-element tags in XML can contain spaces before the "/>". In these languages, unnecessary whitespace increases the file size, and so may slow network transfers. On the other hand, unnecessary whitespace can also inconspicuously mark code, similar to, but less obvious than comments in code. This can be desirable to prove an infringement of license or copyright that was committed by copying and pasting.

In XML attribute values, sequences of whitespace characters are treated as a single space when the document is read by a parser.[28] Whitespace in XML element content is not changed in this way by the parser, but an application receiving information from the parser may choose to apply similar rules to element content. An XML document author can use the xml:space="preserve" attribute on an element to instruct the parser to discourage the downstream application from altering whitespace in that element's content.

In most HTML elements, a sequence of whitespace characters is treated as a single inter-word separator, which may manifest as a single space character when rendering text in a language that normally inserts such space between words.[29] Conforming HTML renderers are required to apply a more literal treatment of whitespace within a few prescribed elements, such as the pre tag and any element for which CSS has been used to apply pre-like whitespace processing. In such elements, space characters will not be "collapsed" into inter-word separators.

In both XML and HTML, the non-breaking space character, along with other non-"standard" spaces, is not treated as collapsible "whitespace", so it is not subject to the rules above.

File names

Such usage is similar to multiword file names written for operating systems and applications that are confused by embedded space codes—such file names instead use an underscore (_) as a word separator, as_in_this_phrase.

Another such symbol was U+2422 ␢ BLANK SYMBOL. This was used in the early years of computer programming when writing on coding forms. Keypunch operators immediately recognized the symbol as an "explicit space".[15] It was used in BCDIC,[15] EBCDIC,[15] and ASCII-1963.[15]

See also

• Carriage return
• Em (typography)
• En (typography)
• Form feed
• Indent style
• Line feed
• Newline
• Programming style
• Prosigns for Morse code
• Regular expression#Character classes for the white-space character class.
• Space bar
• Space (punctuation)
• Tab key
• Trimming (computer programming)
• Whitespace (programming language)
• Zero-width space

References

1. "The Unicode Standard". Unicode Consortium.
2. "Character design standards – space characters". Character design standards. Microsoft. 1998–1999. Archived from the original on August 23, 2000. Retrieved 2009-05-18.
3. The Unicode Standard 5.0, printed edition, p.205
4. "General Punctuation" (PDF). The Unicode Standard 5.1. Unicode Inc. 1991–2008. Retrieved 2009-05-13.
5. Sargent, Murray III (2006-08-29). "Unicode Nearly Plain Text Encoding of Mathematics (Version 2)". Unicode Technical Note #28. Unicode Inc. pp. 19–20. Retrieved 2009-05-19.
6. Gillam, Richard (2002). Unicode Demystified: A Practical Programmer's Guide to the Encoding Standard. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-201-70052-2.
7. Hickson, Ian. "12.5 Named character references". HTML Standard. WHATWG.
8. Wolfram. "\[NegativeThickSpace]". Wolfram Language Documentation.
9. Wolfram. "\[NegativeMediumSpace]". Wolfram Language Documentation.
10. Wolfram. "\[NegativeThinSpace]". Wolfram Language Documentation.
11. Wolfram. "\[NegativeVeryThinSpace]". Wolfram Language Documentation.
12. Faltstrom, P., ed. (August 2010). "Zero Width Non-Joiner". The Unicode Code Points and Internationalized Domain Names for Applications (IDNA). IETF. sec. A.1. doi:10.17487/RFC5892. RFC 5892. Retrieved September 4, 2019.
13. Faltstrom, P., ed. (August 2010). "Zero Width Joiner". The Unicode Code Points and Internationalized Domain Names for Applications (IDNA). IETF. sec. A.2. doi:10.17487/RFC5892. RFC 5892. Retrieved September 4, 2019.
14. European Computer Manufacturers Association (1968-11-28). Graphic Representation of the Control Characters of the ECMA 7-Bit Coded Character Set for Information Interchange (PDF). ECMA-17.
15. Mackenzie, Charles E. (1980). Coded Character Sets, History and Development. The Systems Programming Series (1 ed.). Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc. pp. 41, 47, 52, 102–103, 117, 119, 130, 132, 141, 148, 150–151, 212, 424. ISBN 978-0-201-14460-4. LCCN 77-90165. Retrieved 2016-05-22.
16. "American Standard Code for Information Interchange, ASA X3.4-1963". American Standards Association (ASA). 1963-06-17.
17. Niklaus Wirth, Programming in Modula-2
18. "Cambridge Z88 User Guide". 4.7 (4th ed.). Cambridge Computer Limited. 2016 [1987]. Basic concepts - The keyboard. Archived from the original on 2016-12-12. Retrieved 2016-12-12.
19. "Cambridge Z88 User Guide". 4.0 (4th ed.). Cambridge Computer Limited. 1987. Appendix D. Archived from the original on 2016-12-12. Retrieved 2016-12-12.
20. "Cambridge Z88 User Guide". 4.7 (4th ed.). Cambridge Computer Limited. 2015 [1987]. Appendix D. Archived from the original on 2016-12-12. Retrieved 2016-12-12.
21. Chung, Jaemin (2017-03-30). Proposal to add an informative note to U+3164 HANGUL FILLER (PDF). Unicode Consortium. UTC L2/17-081.
22. Hangul Jamo (PDF). Unicode Consortium. 2020-10-25.
23. "ibm-933_P110-1995". ICU Demonstration - Converter Explorer. International Components for Unicode.
24. "ibm-933_P110-1995 (lead bytes 0E84)". ICU Demonstration - Converter Explorer. International Components for Unicode.
25. Usage of the different dash types is illustrated, e.g., in The Chicago Manual of Style, §§ 6.80, 6.83–6.86
26. http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg14/www/docs/n1548.pdf Section 6.4, paragraph 3
27. Fielding, R.; et al., "2.2 Basic Rules", Hypertext Transfer Protocol—HTTP/1.1, RFC 2616
28. "3.3.3 Attribute-Value Normalization". Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Fifth Edition). World Wide Web Consortium.
29. "9.1 Whitespace". W3CHTML 4.01 Specification. World Wide Web Consortium.

External links

• Property List of Unicode Character Database