User Guide

336 Chapter 2: ColdFusion Tags

• You cannot embed the tag within conditional logic, because the pageEncoding attribute is

evaluated when ColdFusion compiles a page (not when it executes the page). For example, the

following code has no effect at execution time, because the

cfprocessingdirective tag has

already been evaluated:

</cfif>

• If you have multiple cfprocessingdirective tags in one page that specify the pageEncoding

attribute, they must all specify the same value; if not, ColdFusion throws an error.

• If you specify only the pageencoding attribute, do not use a separate end tag.

• ColdFusion accepts character encoding names that are supported by the Java platform. If an

invalid name is specified, ColdFusion throws an InvalidEncodingSpecification exception.

• If a page has a byte order mark (BOM), and a pageencoding attribute specifies an encoding

that differs from the BOM, ColdFusion generates an error.

The following rules apply to the

suppressWhiteSpace attribute:

• You can specify the suppresswhitespace attribute value as a constant or a variable. To use a

variable: define the variable (for example,

whitespaceSetting), assign it the value yes or no,

and code a statement such as the following:

code to whose output the setting is applied

</cfprocessingdirective>

• The suppresswhitespace attribute only affects code that you put between the

<cfprocessingdirective> begin tag and the </cfprocessingdirective> end tag.

The following example shows the use of a nested

cfprocessingdirective tag. The outer tag

suppresses unnecessary whitespace during computation of a large table; the inner tag retains

whitespace, to output a preformatted table.

Example

<cfoutput>#table_data#

</cfoutput>

</cfprocessingdirective>

The following example shows the use of the pageencoding attribute: