Way to keep spaces in Google App Script alert?

Question

SpreadsheetApp.getUi().alert('foo bar')

When I use this piece of code, it appears as 'foo bar', removing the additional spaces in between. is there a way coerce Google App Script to do otherwise? It appears to only remove additional spaces, which makes sense, but I'd rather have spaces than dashes. If there isn't a way to do it through the UI API, what alternatives do I have?

Answer 1

Instead of using spaces consider using non-breaking spaces \xa0 instead.

The following code uses the String.prototype.replace with a regular expression / /g ^* to replace all spaces with non-breaking spaces.
_{* Global flag g is required or it'll only replace the 1^st space.}

function myFunction() {
  const message = 'foo        bar'.replace(/ /g,'\xa0');
  SpreadsheetApp.getUi().alert(message);
}

If using this repeatedly in your script, you could also create a function and call it where needed:

function myFunction() {
  const message = noBreakSpaces('foo        bar');
  SpreadsheetApp.getUi().alert(message);  
  
  function noBreakSpaces(txt) {
    return txt.replace(/ /g, '\xa0');
  }
}

Answer 2

I created a short function from Rubén's solution:

function SpaceBuilder(spaces){  
    var mySpaces = ' ';  
    for(var nnn=1;nnn<spaces;nnn++){  
        mySpaces = mySpaces + ' ';  
    }  
    return mySpaces.replace(/ /g,'\xa0');  
}

Example:

var xxx = SpaceBuilder(5);  
Ui.alert('Hello' + xxx + 'World')

Results:

Hello     World