How to stop jQuery from returning tabs and spaces from formated code on .html() .val() .text() etc

I've got an html table:

<table><tr>
 <td>M1</td>
 <td>M2</td>
 <td>M3</td>
 <td>M4</td>
</tr></table>

and a simple jQ script:

$('td').click(function(){ alert( $(this).html() ); });

That works just fine.... but in the real world, I've got several hundred table cells and the code is for开发者_如何学JAVAmatted improperly in places because of several people editing the page.

So if the html is:

     <td>
                     M1         

             </td>

then the alert() is giving me all the tabs and returns and spaces:

Javascript Alert http://bit.ly/9B0Xon

What can I do to get ONLY the text without the tabs and spaces? I've tried .html(), .val(), .text() to no avail. Thanks!

jQuery has a built-in trim function, $.trim(), you can use it like this:

$('td').click(function() {  alert( $.trim($(this).html()) ); });

Nick and Darin posted a great way to trim the white space from the beginning and end of the content, but in case you have a lot of white space in the middle, say this as an example:

<div>
             M1
                                                  M2
     </div>

You can trim all the white space using this combination:

$('div').click(function() {
 var html = $.trim($(this).html().replace(/(\s+)/g,' '));
 alert(html);
})

You can trim the string:

String.prototype.trim = function () {
    return this.replace(/^\s*/, '').replace(/\s*$/, '');
};

and use it like this:

$('td').click(function() { 
    var html = $(this).html().trim();
    alert(html); 
});