Is_state_attr inconsistent results

[Mathieu_Lafrance]

In dev tools / template, when I type

{{ state_attr('sensor.home_alarm_keypad','alpha') }}

I get

But when I type

{{ is_state_attr('sensor.home_alarm_keypad','alpha','DISARMED CHIME   Ready to Arm') }}

I get

According to dev tools:

Also tried

{{ is_state('sensor.home_alarm_keypad','DISARMED CHIME Ready to Arm') }}

I get:

What am I missing ?

Home Assistant 0.116.2

arch	armv7l
chassis	embedded
dev	false
docker	true
docker_version	19.03.11
hassio	true
host_os	HassOS 4.13
installation_type	Home Assistant OS
os_name	Linux
os_version	4.19.127-v7l
python_version	3.8.5
supervisor	247
timezone	America/New_York
version	0.116.2
virtualenv	false

[DavidFW1960 (David)]

{{ state_attr('sensor.home_alarm_keypad','alpha') == 'DISARMED CHIME   Ready to Arm' }}

[Mathieu_Lafrance]

Hello David,

Thanks for your reply. Trying what you propose yields the following:

I think this statement is equivalent to the two previous statement I posted, or at least, I think they should be. Correct me if I’m wrong.

There seems to be a hidden character somewhere. This state is the output of the LCD of my alarm. I suspect the comparison may be done with a non-printable character. Is there a way to convert:

{{ state_attr('sensor.home_alarm_keypad','alpha') }}

Into hex to see if that’s the case?

[123 (Taras)]

@Mathieu_Lafrance

There seems to be a hidden character somewhere

Possibly a tab character between “DISARMED CHIME” and “Ready to arm”?

Try this:

{{ 'Ready to arm' in state_attr('sensor.home_alarm_keypad','alpha') }}

It doesn’t attempt to match the entire value of alpha, just a portion of it.

[123 (Taras)]

I carried out the following simple experiment:

If the whitespace between “ DISARMED CHIME ” and “ Ready to arm ” is a tab character then you can use \t to match it.

{{ is_state_attr('sensor.home_alarm_keypad','alpha','DISARMED CHIME\tReady to Arm') }}

[Mathieu_Lafrance]

{{ is_state_attr('sensor.home_alarm_keypad','alpha','DISARMED CHIME\tReady to Arm') }}

Still yields false, but

{{ 'Ready to arm' in state_attr('sensor.home_alarm_keypad','alpha') }}

yield true, so there is a non-printable character after Ready to arm, but it’s not a tab. I don’t care atm about finding out, as I only need either the part before OR after that non-printable character. Therefore, ‘Ready to arm’ in state_attr() works for what I’m looking to do.

Good catch, thank you !

[Hellis81]

@Mathieu_Lafrance

{{ is_state_attr('sensor.home_alarm_keypad','alpha','DISARMED CHIME\tReady to Arm') }}

Still yields false

It could be that there is both space and tab.

[Mathieu_Lafrance]

tried space space tab, tab space space, space tab space, space tab, tab space, none of them works. Could it be a line change ?

[123 (Taras)]

If you are curious to know what’s in the whitespace, you can use the urlencode filter. For example, this reveals the whitespace to be a tab character (%09).

ASCII Table

[Hellis81]

I had no idea that was possible.
In that case it should be possible to compare the state | urlencode with the output of the same.

[123 (Taras)]

Sure, you could do that, but it makes it a bit less ‘friendly’:

{{ state_attr('sensor.home_alarm_keypad','alpha') | urlencode == 'DISARMED%20CHIME%20%09%20%20Ready%20to%20Arm' }}

[Mathieu_Lafrance]

There’s no tab. There was one space before the whole string, and two spaces after the whole string, including the three space inbetween. HA doesn’t display spaces before/after:

Thanks for the finding!

[123 (Taras)]

Now that you know the problem is due to leading and trailing spaces, you can get rid of them using the trim filter.

This screenshot demonstrates how the trim filter eliminates the leading/trailing spaces from the supplied string. urlencode is used only to show that the spaces have been removed.