Suppressing Newline Character

My XML (sometimes) looks like this :

<DATA>
abc
def
</DATA>


I need to transform this to some javascript on my html page that looks
something like :

jFunction('abcdef');

but I get

jFunction('abc&#xA;def');

which I appreciate is not surprising as there is a new line in my data.

What is the easiest way of detecting and removing the newline character when
I do the transform ?

Thanks

Steve