1. A method for processing a user input character string entered by a user into a computer system that comprises a browser, said method comprising: receiving the user input character string, said user input character string conforming to a native character set and encoding of the browser for a language selected by the user; converting the user input character string to a converted character string consisting of characters of a Universal Character Set (UCS) which are independent of platform and language; removing any leading and any trailing whitespace characters in the converted character string; and converting any remaining whitespace characters of the converted character string to a single value, resulting in the converted character string being a resultant character string.