A method and system for processing a user input character string entered by a user into a computer system that comprises a browser. The user input character string is received. The user input character string conforms to a native character set and encoding of the browser for a language selected by the user. The user input character string is converted to a converted character string consisting of characters of a Universal Character Set (UCS) which are independent of platform and language. Any leading and any trailing whitespace characters in the converted character string are removed. Following the removal of any leading and any trailing whitespace characters in the converted character string, any remaining whitespace characters of the converted character string are converted to a single value, resulting in the converted character string being a resultant character string.