How do I make JSP tag files NOT ignore all whitespace?

Question

I\'m really stumped on this one. I want to output a list and have the tag file take care of commas, singular versus plural, etc. but when I display the list it completely ig

Answer 1

It's actually a bug in the EL parser which causes spaces in between EL expressions to be eaten. E.g.

${bean.foo} ${bean.bar} ${bean.waa}

would get printed as (assuming that they returns the very same String value as its property name is):

foobarwaa

I recall that this issue was reported somewhere before, but I can't seem to find it right now. As far now you can fix it by using JSTL c:out tag:

<c:out value="${bean.foo} ${bean.bar} ${bean.waa}" />

which correctly get printed as:

foo bar waa

Answer 2

So you are saying your tag doesn't print out white space at all? Is there any whitespace for it to print out?

Can you post the code, and a short example of how you use it?

Answer 3

Maybe put the jsp content in an html <pre> tag? This seems to me to be the right thing to do as the list is pre-formatted content.

Answer 4

I used   entity instead of space but generally I think this sucks that either ALL whitespace is eaten and one has to hack with entities or you have vast space in the generated HTML code.