This function will strip out all tabs and return characters. It will also collapse all runs of multiple spaces down to one. It will also remove a leading and trailing spaces. It is similar to the php_strip_whiespace() function in PHP.

function collapseWhiteSpace( theString ) {
	theString =  theString.split("\r").join("");
	theString =  theString.split("\t").join("");
	while ( theString.indexOf("  " ) != -1 ) {
		theString= theString.split("  ").join(" ");
	}
	if (theString.substr(0,1) == " ") {
		theString = theString.substr( 1 );
	}
	if (theString.substr( theString.length-1, 1 ) == " ") {
		theString = theString.substr( 0, theString.length - 1 );
	}
	return( theString );
}