shouldn't it rather be "ignores" or "tolerates" whitespace?
My suggested phrasing would be on "but allows° optional blanks between the braces and the hex value"
(And whether I said "blanks" or "spaces" or "horizontal whitespace" or "whitespace" would probably depend on whether tests show that it allows only space, or any horizontal space, or any horizontal or vertical space. Like you, I only have Strawberry so limited to 5.32 and cannot test the feature.)
update: °: Rereading the original, I think they intended that sentence to mean the equivalent of "This second example of the syntax means the same as the example above, but shows the optional blanks that are allowed..."