Whitespace for an assertEquals is treated in roughly the
same way that web browsers treat it.
Whitespace at the start and end of the string is removed before comparison and whitespace in the middle of a string is compressed so that multiple whitespace characters become a single space character. The same "normalization" is performed on both the text read from the document and the string result of the evaluation.
<span concordion:assertEquals="#firstName">Fred Flintstone</span>
<span concordion:assertEquals="#firstName"> Fred
Flintstone
</span>
If #firstName returns "Fred Flintstone",
both
the above statements will report a success.
If #firstName returns " Fred Flintstone ",
both
the above statements will report a success.
If #firstName returns "Wilma Flintstone",
both
the above statements will report a failure.