In Wilton's discussion of getting a cookie's value (pages 426-7), he first searches the cookiename with a space preceding the cookieName, eg - cookieValue.indexOf(" " + cookieName + "="). If that returns
-1, he searches for the same cookieName without that space.

Why search for the cookie with that preceding space, at all? If I know that no space leads the cookieName of the cookie that I want, why then should I look for that cookie with preceding space? Beyond my control, does document.cookie add a space character to the beginning of the cookieName?

Please advise.

Thanks.

OC

To be honest, I wouldn't know. Doesn't the book or the comments explain his reasoning behind it?

AFAIK, no spaces are added automatically. So a cookie called MyCookie can always be retrieved with the same name. No need to check for additional spaces.....

Imar


---------------------------------------
Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.

In Javascript cookies are indeed separated by a space, like:name1=value1; name2=value2; name3=value3

Adding the space to the search string ensures that you only get a cookie with an exact match on the whole name.

I don't have the book so i'm assuming that the search is done again without the space in case its the first cookie in the list (coz then it wouldn't have the preceding space). Personally I add a space to the beginning of document.cookie and then do the search just once.

hth
Phil

Right, I see now. For some reason I was thinking this was Server Side......

Imar


---------------------------------------
Imar Spaanjaars
Everyone is unique, except for me.

I understand now.

Thank you.

I think the main reason for the presence of the blank space before the cookie name in the instruction cookieValue.indexOf(" " + cookieName + "=") is in the next example:

Let's suppose you have two cookies.

Cookie1 name = "SampleCookie"
Cookie2 name = "AnotherSampleCookie"

and let's suppose that the position in the cookie-string of "AnotherSampleCookie" is before "SampleCookie".

So, when you need to get the Cookie1, using the instruction without the initial blank space - cookieValue.indexOf(cookieName + "=") - you will get the Cookie2, making error.