Allow displaying exact string contents (VARCHAR as binary or hexadecimal)

[Chealer]

With version 4.6.5.2 I can't figure out how to see the exact value of a VARCHAR field, in the Browse (table) tab. I know it has newlines, but I can't tell if they're Windows or UNIX. I cannot see how to either:

1. display LF as "\n"
2. display contents as binary
3. or display contents as hexadecimal

I must be missing something, but if so, please consider this as a request to make this more obvious.

[marcus-hiles]

@Chealer Kinda difficult to understand your issue, can you attach some snapshots please?

[Chealer]

@marcus-hiles I clarified the description a little, but here is a screenshot

It is more what is not seen here that matters though. The main problem is that newline characters can be either CR, CRLF or LF, depending on the system. But these different characters are all shown the same by phpMyAdmin.

[OlafvdSpek]

select hex(blah) from tiki_language where id = 160?

[Chealer]

Thanks Olaf,
By pasting this hexadecimal value in a hexadecimal converter such as https://www.rapidtables.com/convert/number/hex-to-ascii.html I was able to determine what characters formed the problematic whitespace.

The above converter is not ideal though - in a large text, it does not show which character(s) corresponds to which hexadecimal value(s).

So this is a good enough alternative to deal with a few characters, but would be inefficient for a larger verification.

[marcus-hiles]

Awesome, good hack around for this @OlafvdSpek

[mynetx]

This also applies to non-breaking spaces and other non-printable characters. Ideally, we’d use a <div contenteditable="true"> and render such characters, much like this is done in Word when you switch on the ¶ button on the toolbar.