title: Javascript "".length returning 1 rather than 0
body: <p>Ok so I am rather stumped by this one.
  I get a string value from a javascript library. I call <code>myStringVar = myStringVar.trim()</code> but when I do <code>myStringVar.substring(0,1)</code> it gives me an empty string. When I call <code>var arr = myStringVar.split('')</code> the first element in the array is and empty string, and when I call arr[0].trim().length it returns 1 instead of zero.</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/3lB7k.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/3lB7k.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>
  
  <p>Am I missing something?</p>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT</strong>
  Following the comments and responses I have been able to isolate the problem down to the existence of a non-visual unicode character at the beginning of the string. I will now try to find a way to remove those characters from the string....or better yet extract the portions of the string that are of interest. 
  Thanks for the help.</p>