What's with the spaces?

[Paul Foraker]

A couple of days ago, I noticed that when I copied a cell from Excel and
pasted it into a field in LiveCode (4.6 and 6.0.2), the data got padded
with spaces. Not having time to debug it, I passed the data through a
trim() function. Today, a script I use to parse text copied from an email
into a database stack, broke. Looking in the Variables panel, I see all the
variables are padded with spaces. The first thing I do in that script is
put the Clipboard into a variable and convert it to an array. The keys of
the array are fine. The elements are padded with 12 spaces before, none
after.

Going back to the Excel spreadsheet... when I copy a cell and paste it into
BBEdit, no spaces. When I paste it into a LiveCode field, it gets padded
(12 spaces before and after).

My normal state of low grade bewilderment and befuddlement is seriously
tweaked.

Anyone have an idea of what's happening?