What is the difference between   and  ?

Question

I have written one XSLT to transform xml to html. If input xml node contains only space then it inserts the space using following code.

<xsl:text>&#xa0;</xsl:text>

There is another numeric character which also does same thing as shown below.

<xsl:text>&#160;</xsl:text>

Is there any difference between these characters? Are there any examples where one of these will work and other will not?

Which one is recommended to add space?

Thanks,
Sambhaji

Solution 1

  is a non-breaking space ( ).

  is just the same, but in hexadecimal (in HTML entities, the x character shows that a hexadecimal number is coming). There is basically no difference, A0 and 160 are the same numbers in a different base.

You should decide whether you really need a non-breaking space, or a simple space would suffice.

Solution 2

It's the same. It's a numeric character reference. A0 is the same number as 160. The first is in base 16 (hexadecimal) and the second is in base 10 (decimal, everyday base).

Comments

[Black]

So there is no difference between   and  ?

[kapa]

Nope, not at all

[Mithc]

I just a weird error in PHP due to the difference between   and  . There was an space (" " not " ", encoded differently I guess) in an if block, causing from undefined variables to syntax errors. I noticed it thanks to VSCode when I rewrote the if statement and Ctrl + D didn't match the other line even though it was the same content.