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Why doesn’t JavaScript newlines work inside HTML?

I have the following:

<html>
  <body>
    <script type="text/javascript">
      document.write('Hello\nWorld')
    </script>
  </body>
</html>

As you probably all know, \n doesn’t work and I have to use <br> instead. It won’t work either if I link to an external .js file. Here are my questions:

  1. Why doesn’t \n work?
  2. Why does <br> even work? Shouldn’t everything that’s inside the script tags be strictly JavaScript instead of a dirty mix between HTML and JS?
  3. Is it possible to make \n work somehow?
  4. I know \t doesn’t work either. Any other stuff that won’t work inside HTML files?
  5. Unrelated question (I didn’t want to open a new question just for this): I installed Node.js to be able to try out JS scripts from inside vim but when I run this script I get the error "document is not defined". Same thing happens when I try from the REPL. Any ideas?

When searching for similar questions, all I got was that I should use <br> instead of \n.

like image 269
user723636 Avatar asked Apr 25 '11 19:04

user723636


6 Answers

I had:

<div>Hello\nworld</div>

I added the below css to div class and it's working now:

div {
      white-space: pre-wrap;
  }

I hope this solve your problem too.

like image 163
Mahdieh Shavandi Avatar answered Oct 24 '22 06:10

Mahdieh Shavandi


When you write to the page, you're not writing JavaScript; you're writing HTML. \n is a special "line feed" character that doesn't create a line break in the browser's rendering of the HTML. It WILL create a line break in the HTML file itself, but the browser doesn't take this into consideration when it renders out the markup.

Thus, the br tag is required.

like image 26
BraedenP Avatar answered Oct 24 '22 06:10

BraedenP


Why doesn’t \n work?

Because white space is just white space in HTML.

Why does <br> even work?

Because it is the HTML for a line break

Shouldn’t everything that’s inside the script tags be strictly JavaScript instead of a dirty mix between HTML and JS?

That’s subjective. document.write is considered dirty by many as well.

You can always use createElement and createTextNode

Is it possible to make \n work somehow?

<pre>, white-space

I know \t doesn’t work either. Any other stuff that won’t work inside HTML files?

HTML is not plain text. Listing all the differences would be time-consuming, and out of scope for Stack Overflow. Try reading the specification.

Unrelated question (I didn’t want to open a new question just for this)

It is completely unrelated. Open a new question.

like image 19
Quentin Avatar answered Oct 24 '22 07:10

Quentin


\n works. If you have a debugger of sorts (or similar developer tool), you can see the document source, and you will see that there is indeed a newline character. The problem is the way you are looking at the page: you’re not reading its source, you’re reading it as an HTML document. Whitespace in HTML is collapsed into a single space. So when you change the source, it does indeed change, although when interpreted as an HTML document, that change isn’t shown.

Your Node.js error is most probably caused by the fact that you’re running browser scripts on the server. I.e. scripts that refer to the document are intended to be run in a browser, where there is a DOM etc. Although a generic node process doesn’t have such a global object because it isn’t a browser. As such, when you try and run code that references a global object called document on the assumption that it exists just like in the browser, it will throw an error. document.write doesn’t exist; if you want to write to the screen, try console.log or look into the other util functions.

like image 8
davin Avatar answered Oct 24 '22 07:10

davin


When HTML renders, it ignores whitespace. Thus the only way is to use line breaks.

Use <br/> instead of \n and it will work fine

The document.write() function writes HTML into the element.

like image 3
Chris Kooken Avatar answered Oct 24 '22 06:10

Chris Kooken


Use <pre></pre> on the html and it will respect the text format from JS.

like image 3
NATHAN SILVA SANTOS Avatar answered Oct 24 '22 05:10

NATHAN SILVA SANTOS