Message payload - String?

[uproden]

I have been using NodeRed for quite a while and have never seen this before. I am using the "file" in node to grab the contents of a file and it seems to work fine, but it's outputting the message payload as a "string" in a way I have never seen before

I have a switch node after the file in and when doing a payload == some_value it does not work, if I use "contains" it works but that is not ideal in this situation, plus I would like to understand what this is. I have never seen a payload be marked as "string" this way. Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[knolleary]

That means it contains a newline character. If you click on it again to collapse back down, it'll look something like this:

You can see the newline meta character is displayed at the end.

This is why you can't do a direct comparison - you'll need to strip off the newline before you can do that.

[uproden]

Oh wow yeah that was the problem, thank you so much! What would be the easiest way to strip return off the end, I have never had to deal with this one before.

[JGKK]

Have a look at the trim() method:

String.prototype.trim()

[Colin]

Alternatively you could leave it there and use a regex compare to look for something like ^yo\s$ (untested) which matches start of line followed by yo then one white space character and then end of line (I think, I always have to play about a bit to get regexs to work as I don't use them very often).

[JGKK]

I always found regex101.com to be a good place to fiddle with regex expressions. I think the carriage return which is the problem here is \r in a regex if your trying to build one.
Happy forum anniversary by the way @Colin

[Colin]

@JGKK

the problem here is \r in a regex

\s should match CR or LF (or other white space) so saves trying to work out which symbol is which.

@JGKK

Happy forum anniversary by the way

Thanks.

[meeki007]

Sometimes it can be stubborn; to remove the return or next line I keep this in my notes file.

Function to remove next line:

msg.payload = msg.payload.replace(/\n/g,"");
return msg;

Function to remove Return:

msg.payload = msg.payload.replace(/\r/g,"");
return msg;

You can remove both too!:

msg.payload = msg.payload.replace(/[\r\n]/g, "");
return msg;

[JGKK]

this is what trim() does, no need for a regex replace.

[meeki007]

Yes but trim() only removes it from the beginning and end of a string. And every blue moon It will miss a '/r' even if its at the end of a string. I've had trim() act funny with some of my returns from the exec node.

lets say I had a string from file like this:

hello
world

I want:

hello world

As a variable msg.payload with no line break or return in the middle or the end.
This is why i posted the replace option

[Colin]

@JGKK

this is what trim() does, no need for a regex replace.

I didn't mean use a regex replace in a function node, I was saying to use a regex match in the switch node so you don't need the function node at all.