Why does innerHTML append a space when there is none in reality?

<li id="li_debug">ExtraSpace</li>

<SCRIPT language="javascript">
alert('innerHTML is (' + document.getElementById('li_debug').innerHTML + ')');
</SCRIPT>

This seriously messes with my ability in dynamic HTML if I depend on the innerHTML to locate elements.

[quote author=Grok link=board=22;threadid=5730;start=0#msg48927 date=1079024505]
Why does innerHTML append a space when there is none in reality?

<li id="li_debug">ExtraSpace</li>

<SCRIPT language="javascript">
alert('innerHTML is (' + document.getElementById('li_debug').innerHTML + ')');
</SCRIPT>

This seriously messes with my ability in dynamic HTML if I depend on the innerHTML to locate elements.
[/quote]

So just create a trim() function (I checked, there isn't an implicit one on String types). It wouldn't be hard.

Edit: Still broken. InnerHTML and InnerText both show the extra character.

Hmm JavaScript has much more ability than I had known.

Ended up writing a trim function from regular expressions.

function trim(e) {
return e.replace(/(^\s*)|(\s*$)/g, "");
}

The regex expression was in an MSDN example showing how to add a trim method to your own object.

innerHTML is bad. Don't use it if you can avoid it.

[quote author=St0rm.iD link=board=22;threadid=5730;start=0#msg48957 date=1079042107]
innerHTML is bad. Don't use it if you can avoid it.
[/quote]

Explain?

And answer this please. Can't find it in my Wrox Professional HTML 4.01 Reference.

#include "/js/MyLibrary.js"

Do I use <link> to get server to include my javascript function library? Or what?

[code]
<script src="bleh.js"></script>
[/code]
innerHTML isn't standard in every DOM implementation...I think.

No it's not; innerHTML is part of the Internet Explorer DOM. The Netscape's document.layers model does not have something like that (well I'm sure it does, but I can't remember).

If you remember the property, you can use function prototyping for the same effect. It's been a long time, but in dealing with reality, I've never really worried about making it cross-browser friendly. I looked at my site statistics to discover that 99.5% of my site's hits were IE (the one right now that uses ImageReady cross-platform JS for image rollovers).

Remember though, you can get away with different code type for different browsers:

[code]
var ns4 = ie4 = other = false;
if (document.layers) {
ns4 = true;
} else if (document.all)
ie4 = true;
} else {
other = true;
}

if (ns4) {
// do netscape-compatible junk
} else if (ie4) {
// do microshaft stuff
} else {
// say "I suck cuz I don't use a standard browser!
}
[/code]

IIRC, document.layers isn't a part of the Mozilla spec, either.