Possible to assign tab value to html form element?

Question

I am curious if it possible to assign a tab character as value to an html dropdown list. This is my current markup:

<select id="delimiter-select" class="form-control form-control-sm csv-select">
               <option value=",">Comma (,)</option>
               <option value=";">Semi-Colon (;)</option>
               <option value="|">Pipes (|)</option>
               <option value="Tab">Tab</option>
</select>

Where the value Tab is I would like that to be a tab character that I can eventually pass to JS.

Possible duplicate of [How to get a tab character?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9660987/how-to-get-a-tab-character) — Cory Kleiser, Jun 05 '18 at 12:34

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 05 '18 at 12:34

3

There is a HTML entity for the Tab character, &Tab; or 	, use that:

document.getElementById("delimiter-select").onchange = function (e) {console.log(` Separator is ${e.target.value} separating`)}

<select id="delimiter-select" class="form-control form-control-sm csv-select">
  <option value=",">Comma (,)</option>
  <option value=";">Semi-Colon (;)</option>
  <option value="|">Pipes (|)</option>
  <option value="&Tab;">Tab</option>
</select>

answered Jun 05 '18 at 12:34

Luca Kiebel

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It is confusing that when I look at the dom structure and only see a white space character but it sends a tab character to javascript. Any idea why it behaves this way? – Jordan Rose Jun 05 '18 at 12:44
@JordanRose because tab is just white space. – Cory Kleiser Jun 05 '18 at 12:46
All HTML entities behave that way, they are just representations of the actual character, a Tab, as Cory wrote is just white space, you can't see it when it's rendered – Luca Kiebel Jun 05 '18 at 12:47

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 05 '18 at 12:32

0

Use 	 as the tabulation HTML entity

console.log($('#input').val() + 'Test');

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<input id="input" value="&#9;">

answered Jun 05 '18 at 12:32

Suren Srapyan

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Possible to assign tab value to html form element?

2 Answers2