Check if a string has white space

Question

I\'m trying to check if a string has white space. I found this function but it doesn\'t seem to be working:

function hasWhiteSpace(s) 
{
            


        

Answer 1

A few others have posted answers. There are some obvious problems, like it returns false when the Regex passes, and the ^ and $ operators indicate start/end, whereas the question is looking for has (any) whitespace, and not: only contains whitespace (which the regex is checking).

Besides that, the issue is just a typo.

Change this...

var reWhiteSpace = new RegExp("/^\s+$/");

To this...

var reWhiteSpace = new RegExp("\\s+");

When using a regex within RegExp(), you must do the two following things...

• Omit starting and ending / brackets.
• Double-escape all sequences code, i.e., \\s in place of \s, etc.

Full working demo from source code....

$(document).ready(function(e) { function hasWhiteSpace(s) {
        var reWhiteSpace = new RegExp("\\s+");
    
        // Check for white space
        if (reWhiteSpace.test(s)) {
            //alert("Please Check Your Fields For Spaces");
            return 'true';
        }
    
        return 'false';
    }
  
  $('#whitespace1').html(hasWhiteSpace(' '));
  $('#whitespace2').html(hasWhiteSpace('123'));
});

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.3.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
" ": <span id="whitespace1"></span><br>
"123": <span id="whitespace2"></span>

Answer 2

Your regex won't match anything, as it is. You definitely need to remove the quotes -- the "/" characters are sufficient.

/^\s+$/ is checking whether the string is ALL whitespace:

• ^ matches the start of the string.
• \s+ means at least 1, possibly more, spaces.
• $ matches the end of the string.

Try replacing the regex with /\s/ (and no quotes)

Answer 3

One simple approach you could take is to compare the length of the original string with that of the string to have whitespaces replaced with nothing. For example:

function hasWhiteSpaces(string) {
    if (string.length == string.replace(" ", "").length) {return false}
    return true
}

Answer 4

This function checks for other types of whitespace, not just space (tab, carriage return, etc.)

import some from 'lodash/fp/some'
const whitespaceCharacters = [' ', '  ',
  '\b', '\t', '\n', '\v', '\f', '\r', `\"`, `\'`, `\\`,
  '\u0008', '\u0009', '\u000A', '\u000B', '\u000C',
'\u000D', '\u0020','\u0022', '\u0027', '\u005C',
'\u00A0', '\u2028', '\u2029', '\uFEFF']
const hasWhitespace = char => some(
  w => char.indexOf(w) > -1,
  whitespaceCharacters
)

console.log(hasWhitespace('a')); // a, false
console.log(hasWhitespace(' ')); // space, true
console.log(hasWhitespace(' ')); // tab, true
console.log(hasWhitespace('\r')); // carriage return, true

If you don't want to use Lodash, then here is a simple some implementation with 2 s:

const ssome = (predicate, list) =>
{
  const len = list.length;
  for(const i = 0; i<len; i++)
  {
    if(predicate(list[i]) === true) {
      return true;
    }
  }
  return false;
};

Then just replace some with ssome.

const hasWhitespace = char => some(
  w => char.indexOf(w) > -1,
  whitespaceCharacters
)

For those in Node, use:

const { some } = require('lodash/fp');

Answer 5

With additions to the language it is much easier, plus you can take advantage of early return:

// Use includes method on string
function hasWhiteSpace(s) {
  const whitespaceChars = [' ', '\t', '\n'];
  return whitespaceChars.some(char => s.includes(char));
}

// Use character comparison
function hasWhiteSpace(s) {
  const whitespaceChars = [' ', '\t', '\n'];
  return Array.from(s).some(char => whitespaceChars.includes(char));
}

const withSpace = "Hello World!";
const noSpace = "HelloWorld!";

console.log(hasWhiteSpace(withSpace));
console.log(hasWhiteSpace(noSpace));

console.log(hasWhiteSpace2(withSpace));
console.log(hasWhiteSpace2(noSpace));

I did not run performance benchmark but these should be faster than regex but for small text snippets there won't be that much difference anyway.

Answer 6

You can simply use the indexOf method on the input string:

function hasWhiteSpace(s) {
  return s.indexOf(' ') >= 0;
}

Or you can use the test method, on a simple RegEx:

function hasWhiteSpace(s) {
  return /\s/g.test(s);
}

This will also check for other white space characters like Tab.