Chrome squashes spaces on paste

Question

This redditor found an interesting Chrome UX behavior on paste. Chrome squashes spaces when pasted into the address bar or in window.prompt. But does not squash when pasting into input fields or in the console.

Here is a runnable snippet with sample inputs and outputs.

On Chrome:

                 input | typed    | copy/pasted
 "h e l l o w o r l d" | 9 spaces | 9 spaces
 "hello         world" | 9 spaces | 1 spaces

On Firefox:

                 input | typed    | copy/pasted
 "h e l l o w o r l d" | 9 spaces | 9 spaces
 "hello         world" | 9 spaces | 9 spaces

var str = window.prompt('Enter a few spaces.');
var spaces = (str.match(/ /g) || []).length;
console.log(`You entered ${spaces} spaces`);

Is this behavior documented anywhere in Chrome? I can't find this through a cursory search. Should this be considered a Chrome bug? On one hand, it could be nice to hand-hold certain users, but on the other hand, Chrome is not respecting the users' explicit instructions.

Is there a way to prevent this behavior or work around?

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More findings, on Chrome 65 on Linux:

Using the X selection copy buffer thing (select, middle-click), the spaces are preserved when pasting into a window.prompt input. But, the spaces are not preserved when pasting into the address bar.

Using ctrl+c, ctrl+v, spaces are not preserved in either window.prompt nor the address bar.

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Commentors report that this behavior is not present in OSX.