Processing of user character inputs having whitespace

A computer program product comprising a computer readable medium having a computer program recorded therein, said computer program adapted to be executed on a processor of a computer system to perform a method for processing a user input character string entered by a user into the computer system, said computer system comprising a browser, said method comprising:

• receiving the user input character string, said user input character string conforming to a native character set and encoding of the browser for a language selected by the user;
• converting the user input character string to a converted character string consisting of characters of a Universal Character Set (UCS) which are independent of platform and language;
• removing any leading and any trailing whitespace characters in the converted character string;
• and
• converting any remaining whitespace characters of the converted character string to a single value, resulting in the converted character string being a resultant character string.

A computer system comprising a memory unit and a processor to the memory unit, said memory unit containing instructions that when executed by the processor implement a method for processing a user input character string entered by a user into a computer system that comprises a browser, said method comprising:

• receiving the user input character string, said user input character string conforming to a native character set and encoding of the browser for a language selected by the user;
• converting the user input character string to a converted character string consisting of characters of a Universal Character Set (UCS) which are independent of platform and language;
• removing any leading and any trailing whitespace characters in the converted character string;
• and
• after said removing, converting any remaining whitespace characters of the converted character string to a single value, resulting in the converted character string being a resultant character string.