Handling Tab Characters in Appian Text Fields

Question

I conducted a test where I copied a tab character from Notepad and pasted it into an Appian text field. Appian recognizes the tab character as a special character rather than treating it as empty spaces. 
 How can I configure or validate this so that Appian treats tab characters as empty spaces? Any insight would be appreciated.

Silas. B. Ferreira · Accepted Answer

trim() doesn't work when the character is a tab char(9) saveInto: {
 a!save(
 local!requisicao['value'],
 substitute(trim(save!value), char(9), "")
 
 )
}, 
 I think we got the answer here, thank you all. 
 However, it needs some adjustments when it's a styledTextEditorField

Stefan Helzle · Answer

Can you share the code of that validation? 
 Be aware that whether a TAB is considered empty or not, very much depends on the specific use case. So a general solution is not possible. But you can easily add your own save logic that removes any entered white space. 
 https://docs.appian.com/suite/help/24.4/fnc_evaluation_save.html

Mike Schmitt · Answer

In your saveInto, you should be able to strip out tabs and probably replace them with spaces. trim() *might* do this but i'd have to check, but otherwise, you could always do it manually - the tab character is (iirc) char(12).

Stefan Helzle · Answer

be aware that the validation does not evaluate the value displayed to the user, but the value stored in your variable or rule input. So you will have to use a!save() to modify the saved value. Use the stripwith() function to remove any characters you want.

Mike Schmitt · Answer

ah yes, char(9) was what i was thinking of above, sorry - yeah you will probably be good to go with substitute(save!value, char(9), " ") (since you said you wanted a blank space).

Silas. B. Ferreira · Answer

saveInto: { a!save( local!requisicao['recordType!MyRecord.field, substitute( substitute(trim(save!value), char(9), ""), "

", "" ) ) },

Handling Tab Characters in Appian Text Fields

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