Re: How come i wrote a NO-BREAK SPACE in xterm+bash ?

[ken <gebser@mousecar.com>]

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.