Copied text from posts contains garbage character

[Stefan Glienke 1901]

I just noticed yet another time that selecting text from a post contains invisible characters - in this particular case I selected the URL from this post:

by selecting from the starting h of http and moved the mouse a bit to the right and down so it selected the entire rest of the line.

 

When I then clicked "go to" in my context menu (using Chrome) I got a 404 which confused me because the url is valid. I eventually found out that the selected text contained some UTF-8 BOM bytes at the end.

Also when inspecting the elements it showed this:

 

 

which according to a google search is a zero width no-break space - turning off JS makes them disappear.

The weird spans are also shown with Firefox however selecting the text does not cause it to contain garbage.

 

Edit: I found what is causing the spans with the ZWNBSP - its the "quote selection" popup that leaves them there. So the issue I am describing here only happens when you selected the text, deselected and then selected again to contain the hidden ZWNBSP character.

Edited February 8, 2019 by Stefan Glienke

[stijnsanders 35]

I'm used to other on-web-page editors to have Ctrl+K pop up the 'link' dialog box so I can paste a URL. Here you have to click the link icon. I've updated my original post.

[KeithLatham 5]

Invisible Formatting