I am trying to print the value of the subscript separator ($;) in an html page, but I am trying to avoid printing values that show up as spaces and variables that are not defined with: 
if ((not defined ($operator)) || ($operator !~ /[^\s+]/))

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But when I pass this the subscript separator, the if statement is evaluated to false and a blank or empty space appears in the html page. What's going on?

Problem solved: The issue was with the subscript separator itself. The default value is "\034". This value cannot be rendered in my html, so it appears as space. Thank you to all those who replied.

In reply to printing the subscript separator by jacques

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