The extra whitespace is coming from newlines, often at the end of declaration lines at the beginning of the JSP. For example, the following jsp:

<%@ page import='java.util.*' %> <%@ page import='java.io.*' %> Hello world

Has newlines in these locations:

<%@ page import='java.util.*' %>NL <%@ page import='java.io.*' %>NL Hello worldNL

The result contains the newlines, which may be surprising:

Hello world

One solution is to let the JSP tag extend across the newline:

<%@ page import='java.util.*' %><%@ page import='java.io.*' %>Hello world

Another solution is to use JSP comments to remove the newlines:

<%@ page import='java.util.*' %><%-- --%><%@ page import='java.io.*' %><%-- --%>Hello world

Another solution is to use the XML syntax of JSP. Parsing of XML causes removal of extra whitespace.

<jsp:root> <jsp:directive.page import="java.util.*"/> <jsp:directive.page import="java.io.*"/> <jsp:text>Hello world</jsp:text> </jsp:root>

Resin also supports the use of the '\' character to eat whitespace (this is a Resin specific feature):

<%@ page import='java.util.*' %>\ <%@ page import='java.io.*' %>\ Hello world