Space Before Closing Slash?

99
votes

I've frequently seen a space preceding the closing slash in XML and HTML tags. The XHTML line break is probably the canonical example:

<br />

instead of:

<br/>

The space seems superfluous. In fact, I think that it is superfluous.

What is the reason for writing this space?

I've read that the space solves some "backwards compatibility issues." Which backwards compatibility issues? Are those issues still relevant, or are we still adding extra spaces for the sake of, say, IE3 compatibility? Does there exist some spec with the definitive answer on this?

If not backwards compatibility, then is it a readability issue? Similar to the Great Open Curly Brace debate?

void it_goes_up_here() {

int no_you_fool_it_goes_down_there()
{

I can certainly respect differing stylistic opinions, so I'll be happy to learn that writing the space is simply a matter of taste.

8
htmlxmlxhtmlcoding-style
I'm so used to it that <br /> just looks so much better than <br/> – mk12

8 Answers

66
votes

The answer is people wish to adhere to Appendix C of the XHTML1.0 specification. Which you only need to do if you are serving XHTML as text/html. Which most people do, because XHTML's real MIME type (application/html+xml) does not work in Internet Explorer.

No current browser cares for the space. Browsers are very tolerant of these things.

The space used to be required to ensure HTML parsers treated the trailing slash as an unrecognised attribute.

32
votes

Netscape 4.80 showing different behaviour of <br/> and <br /> in HTML

Supporting bobince's answer with screenshot of Netscape 4.80 showing documents

data:text/html,<title>space</title>foo<br />bar

(top left, linebreak rendered) and

data:text/html,<title>no space</title>foo<br/>bar

(bottom left, linebreak ignored).

Posting as answer to show the picture

Tangentially related: in fact I had a lengthy answer identifying the cause of such misbehaviour of ancient browsers (and resulting recommendation to include space) in misunderstood SGML specs, namely SGML Null End Tag (NET) (where 1<tag/2/3 equals 1<tag>2</tag>3 so 1<tag/>2 would actually mean 1<tag>>2), but not only I was unable to find good proof and concrete version of standard, I wasn't even able to grasp proper standard-complying behaviour. So few raw links for reference:

(Unable to reproduce there now, but supports Lee Kowalkowski's statement about multiple browsers affected by this.)

26
votes

Are those issues still relevant or are we still adding extra spaces for the sake of, say, IE3 compatibility?

You were close - it is for Netscape 4.

It is interesting to see other rationalisations, but that's all it was meant for.

5
votes

No, the space is not required but it is necessary for some older browsers to render those tags correctly. The proper way to do it is without the extra space as this is something XHTML inherited from XML.

4
votes

The space just makes the tags more readable. I am a big proponent of formatting for more readable code. Little things like that go a long way. Without the space the closing tag blends in with the opening tag. It takes just an instant longer for me to process it as I am quickly reading the code.

3
votes

In XHTML, br tags must be closed, but the space is not necessary. It's a stylistic thing. In HTML, br tags cannot be closed, so both are wrong.

0
votes

I think that the white space is a way to reinforce the idea that this tag is empty and it closes itself.

Today i don't use the white space anymore because i never had a problem with no white space.

0
votes

What if there was a very lazy html writer out there or maybe he had a fear of quotation marks. Consider the following if you were his robot page crawler...

<img src=http://myunquotedurl.com/image.jpg />

versus

<img src=http://myunquotedurl.com/image.jpg/>

This might seem small but look what it can do if the space isn't there. The robot won't know if the slash is part of the url or part of the closing tag.