cfif and spaces

> I have a response code is a four string character e.g. YYYM or NNNN
>
> sometimes it comes back with four spaces " " <<<no quotes of course.
>
> If I am doing <cfif responseCode EQ " "> Will I catch it or not? Or will
> NEQ "" suffice?

Over and above the other responses, you need to understand that what seems
like blank space to you & I does not seem like blank space to a computer.
The string " " (four space characters) is *absolutely* different from ""
(a zero-length string).

A space is a piece of data, represented (for our purposes) as a byte with
value of 32 (decimal), 20 (hex) or 00100000 (binary). So at its most
obtuse, a four-space string is represented by
00100000001000000010000000100000 in memory. On the other hand, an empty
string is represented by a pointer to a string variable with a null in it
(I'm guessing Java still uses null-terminated strings?)

So let's rephrase your question for clarity:

Does 00100000001000000010000000100000 = 00000000? No. Clearly no.


Sorry, this is an overwrought answer to your question, but sometimes it
helps to stop and think about how the computer might see things, when
wondering about the answer to some question that presents itself.


--
Adam

Yeah, actually, if you NEED an actual four character string then you could be even more strict. Try this instead:

<cfif len(replace(responseCode," ","","all")) eq 4>
do stuff here
<cfelse>
doesn't contain a string or is more or less than 4 characters long / short
</cfif>

I always format my strings when doing comparisons, despite how confident I think I know what it will return.

What I do above, is:

1 - Replace all white spaces from the variable using replace() function
2 - Once this occurs, the len() function then tests the length against a value of 4

Mikey.

Why don't you just do the following:

<cfif trim(responseCode) EQ "">

Using trim will remove these leading and ending white spaces. I think I've understood your problem but I could be wrong.

Thanks,
Mikey.

What happened when you tried it?