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I copied some code from a web page and into my text editor.

The double quote characters changed to this:

<iframe src=“http://www.yahoo.com” style=“width:500px; height:500px;” frameborder=“0?></iframe>

instead of this (which is what I needed):

<iframe src="http://www.yahoo.com" style="width:500px; height:500px;" frameborder="0"></iframe>

Why?

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What editor are you using? – Joshua Nurczyk Sep 29 '09 at 20:12
I'm using Netbeans. – Karl Sep 29 '09 at 22:15
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3 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

Some editors don't handle "smart quotes" well or forcibly convert them to "dumb quotes".

EDIT: I read your examples backwards - the opposite happened: you got so-called "smart" quotes from plain ones. In some editors, that's a configurable setting. And understand that word processors are very different from ordinary text editors. Using Word as a text editor can do strange and damaging things to code or markup languages.

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yup, change your editor :) +1 – Molly7244 Sep 29 '09 at 18:49
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I think he's saying that it converted "dumb" quotes to "smart" quotes. Which would imply that he's using a word processor of some nature, and not a text editor. – wfaulk Sep 29 '09 at 19:08
@wfaulk - yah, you're right. – DaveE Sep 29 '09 at 19:11
No, I'm not using a word processor - I'm using Netbeans, which is a programming IDE. – Karl Sep 29 '09 at 22:16
I don't have NetBeans installed here, but a little googling found this: Tools -> Options -> Editing -> Editor Settings -> Java Editor -> Pair Character Completion. I'm not sure if the setting can be applied to the editor generally or is language-specific. – DaveE Oct 1 '09 at 20:07
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up vote 1 down vote

You need a text editor that's HTML aware e.g. Notepad++. Either that or something 'dumber' than the editor you're using (like Notepad) which won't attempt to 'smart-quote' your code.

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Actually, any real text editor would do better than that, HTML-aware or not. – David Thornley Sep 29 '09 at 21:28
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up vote 0 down vote

Most likely the software is trying to be helpful. If, when you type a quote, it becomes a “ character, wouldn't you want it to do the same conversion when pasting in text?

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