On 08/20/2015 01:59 AM, Bonno Bloksma wrote:
Hi,
In general, one wants NO-BREAK SPACE to be displayed just like a space.
Why would I want a character that doesn't behave as a space to be displayed
as a normal space? (For example, in the shell, as in the OP's original
question.)
It seems a recipe for confusion at best, and for exploits at worst.
I do not understand if you are specifically asking for the relevance of the
NO-BREAK SPACE or just in the case of the console.
In general the no-break space is used in a lot of languages where a Dutch word
like 's morgens consist of 2 parts that should always stay together and not
have the 's on the end of one line and the morgens on the next.
The no-brake space can also be used when writing about money and I would write
$ 500 and I would not want the $ to be at the end of one line and the number to
be at the next line.
If you are talking about console use, indeed I would not know why I would want
/ need it there.
Bonno Bloksma
The expression "look like" is a bit ambiguous, as it can mean either
"look *approximately* like" or "look *exactly like". Perhaps we can all
agree that a non-break space should look similar to a regular space, but
*not* be visually indistinguishable from it.
I can see at least one console usage for a non-break space (and there
could always be other uses invented in future which we can't foresee
now): If someone wants to use a CLI utility to search for, and possibly
do some replacement of, an expression containing a non-break space, then
of course they'd need to type the non-break space in the console. For
example, if you wanted to mass-edit old (pre-non-break-space) documents
to include the non-break space character, you'd probably want to run a
command to replace 's morgens' with 's<non-break space>morgens' in the
console.
