<textarea> function to replace Returns and Spaces

[FunkHouse9]

I'm working on a form to collect data in a textarea which and am trying to keep returns and spaces. I have a couple of functions that I Frankensteined together to replace returns with <br> and to replace spaces with &nbsp;. The <br> part works well enough, but I keep getting "%20" instead of "&nbsp;" for the spaces.

I understand that escape() changes " " to "%20", but I would think the ConvertSpaces function below would change the %20 to &nbsp;, but it doesn't. (FYI, I need &nbsp; instead of %20 because it appears to be the only "space" code that the resulting shopping cart page will accept for multiple sequential spaces.)

I know there's lots about this on the web, but apparently I'm too unskilled to understand anything I'm finding.

<input onclick="ConvertCarriageReturns(this.form.op31,'&l t;br&gt;')" type="image" name="add" /></form>

function ConvertCarriageReturns(textarea, strReplace)
{
textarea.value = escape(textarea.value)
for(i=0;i<textarea.value.length;i++)
{
if(textarea.value.indexOf("%0D%0A") > -1 )
{
textarea.value = textarea.value.replace("%0D%0A",strReplace)
}
}
ConvertSpaces(unescape(textarea.value),'&nbsp;')
}


function ConvertSpaces(textarea, strReplace)
{
textarea.value = escape(textarea.value)
for(i=0;i<textarea.value.length;i++)
{
if(textarea.value.indexOf(" ") > -1 )
{
textarea.value = textarea.value.replace(" ",strReplace)
}
}
textarea.value = unescape(textarea.value)
}

[iam_clint]

i believe you have to replace " " in your serverside code... because it will escape it to %20 also i think.

[FunkHouse9]

Rrrggh. I was really hoping you were going to tell me I missed a semicolon or something easy like that. This is reaching beyond my realm of personal ability now.

[pbmods]

for(i=0;i<textarea.value.length;i++)
{
if(textarea.value.indexOf(" ") > -1 )
{
textarea.value = textarea.value.replace(" ",strReplace)
}
}
textarea.value = unescape(textarea.value)

This might not work properly, especially if, for example, two spaces are next to each other and strReplace is null.

Try this instead:

if(String(strReplace).indexOf(' ') > -1) {
    alert('strReplace contains a space!\n"' + strReplace + '");
    return false;
}
 
textarea.value = textarea.value.replace(/ /g, strReplace);
 

If you don't want to use regular expressions, you could just use the code you had, but without the for loop:

while(textarea.value.indexOf(' ') > -1)
    textarea.value = textarea.value.replace(' ', strReplace);