Module talk:String2/Archive 1

This is an archive of past discussions about Module:String2. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

I added new function "label" which capitalize only first letter for fetched wikidata labels (diff). Because Wikidata English labels generally begin with a lowercase letter (d:Help:Label#Capitalization). New function is almost same as "sentence" function except that "label" doesn't lowering the rest of text. If there are any questions or problems, feel free to report here. Thanks! --Was a bee (talk) 03:03, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

Some objection. A "label" has multiple options. Especially: it is "free" (as in: irrelevant, not defining). If this option wants to imply "page title as a wikilink label", then change the option (parameter) name. -DePiep (talk)

I've removed the label function as obselete in favour of ucfirst. --RexxS (talk) 15:16, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

There is an script error on articles like 999 (album) and Casual Viewin' USA, whith an error on line 35, which originates on line 34. "%a" on line 34 did not match numbers after the pipe in my test, although it does find an letter after the pipe. As both of these articles have an number after the pipe, they both give an script error. The script needs to deal with the possibility of an number after an pipe.--Snaevar (talk) 23:13, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

@Snaevar: I noticed many articles with that problem and I believe I have just fixed the module. Johnuniq (talk) 09:11, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

E.g. {{#invoke:String2 | ucfirst |Đorđe Balašević chronology }} returns ĐOrđe Balašević chronology, as if the function does not realize Đ is a letter and is capitalizing O instead. Note {{ucfirst:Đorđe Balašević chronology}} returns Đorđe Balašević chronology, as it should. Oddly, {{#invoke:String2 | ucfirst |đorđe Balašević chronology }} works correctly (i.e. Đorđe Balašević chronology is returned). {{Infobox album}} chronology is affected, although these kinds of errors seem to be very rare. GregorB (talk) 18:24, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

@GregorB: Almost all of the time, the standard Lua string library calls manage to cope although they only deal with single-byte character codes. Once in a while an application needs to work with UTF-8, and this is one of those cases. I've updated the ucfirst call to use the mw.ustring library which handles UTF-8 characters properly. Now we should get:

• {{#invoke:String2 | ucfirst |Đorđe Balašević chronology }} → Đorđe Balašević chronology
• {{#invoke:String2 | ucfirst |đorđe Balašević chronology }} → Đorđe Balašević chronology

Thanks for spotting that, and please let me know if you find any more issues. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 19:24, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

That was super quick, thanks! GregorB (talk) 19:50, 24 July 2020 (UTC)

Function findlast finds the last item in a list. The first unnamed parameter is the list. The second, optional unnamed parameter is the list separator (default = comma space). It returns the whole list if the separator is not found.

The list is trimmed of leading and trailing whitespace; the separator is not (so that leading or trailing spaces can be included).

One issue is that using Lua special pattern characters as the separator will probably cause problems.

Examples:

• Normal usage: {{#invoke:String2 |findlast | 5, 932, 992,532, 6,074,702, 6,145,291}} → 6,145,291
• Separator not found: {{#invoke:String2 |findlast | 5, 932, 992,532, 6,074,702, 6,145,291 |;}} → 5, 932, 992,532, 6,074,702, 6,145,291
• One item list: {{#invoke:String2 |findlast | 6,074,702 }} → 6,074,702
• List missing{{#invoke:String2 |findlast |}} →
• Space as separator: {{#invoke:String2 |findlast | 5 932 992,532 6,074,702 6,145,291 }} → 5 932 992,532 6,074,702 6,145,291

Any bug reports welcome. --RexxS (talk) 20:33, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

I have added a matchAny function to the sandbox; it takes any number of patterns and returns the index of the first which matches, if any. Demo usage at Template:Infobox animanga/Header/sandbox. Comments welcome. (I'm a new template editor so I can make this change myself if no objections.) User:GKFX^talk 19:17, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

I'm a bit fuzzy at the moment and should not be relied on but the code looks good. I don't understand p._getParameters (please don't explain it) but my guess is that matchAll requires source=input. However, the example usage in the comment does not show that. Johnuniq (talk) 00:59, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Good thing you pointed out p._getParameters, I was using it wrong. Fixed the docs also. User:GKFX^talk 09:56, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

I recently noticed a rather significant issue with uppercasing and lowercasing strings in Lua: it mangles strip markers. The built-in parser functions do not. See sample (now a mock-up):

INVOKE:STRING2|UPPER.'"`UNIQ--REF-0000001E-QINU`"'^[1]

invoke:string2|lower.'"`uniq--ref-0000001f-qinu`"'^[2]
USING UC:^[3]
using lc:^[4]

References

1. ^ A reliable source
2. ^ A reliable source
3. ^ A reliable source
4. ^ A reliable source

Is there any good reason to make this feature available to wikitext? It would be highly confusing for editors and template authors to see strip markers. Otherwise this module's upper and lower functions should be removed from anything using them and replaced with the uc:/lc: parser functions. User:GKFX^talk 18:47, 15 April 2021 (UTC)

 Done These functions have been removed, and the sentence function has been made strip-marker safe. User:GKFX^talk 19:36, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

I implemented the behavior of {{Trunc}} in Lua, as function trunc() in the sandbox. This code is simpler and faster than the template code. I'd like to promote it to the main module (as opposed to having a small side module just for {{trunc}}). Any objections? — hike395 (talk) 09:12, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

I’d like to delete {{Trunc}} entirely. We already have ample substring functions, {{#invoke:string|sub|1|n}} should be adequate (with or without ignore_errors as needed). User:GKFX^talk 09:15, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

{{Trunc}} is transcluded onto 4,400 pages and is used in a tangle of templates. Removing it would be painful. {{#invoke:string|sub|1|''n''|ignore_errors=1}} does not exactly implement the template (because it returns an empty string on error as opposed to the original untruncated string). If you'd like to bring it up at TfD and then be responsible for the cleanup of the mess, please go ahead. If you don't want to go down that path, I'd like to implement it in Lua, either here, or if necessary, in another Module (which I think would be less tidy). I think that would be a lot less work and still make the encyclopedia better. — hike395 (talk) 09:44, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

There is Module:Ustring which removes the unhelpful error handling. I don't think it would be that painful to remove. Having multiple substring functions with random names is a product of the pre-Lua era; I don't think it's something that should be perpetuated. User:GKFX^talk 17:14, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

I agree that it would be better to just call {{#invoke:string|sub}} directly, if possible. If you have the spare time to clean up uses of {{Trunc}}, I would support deletion. I just don't have time to clean it up myself. — hike395 (talk) 17:47, 9 June 2021 (UTC)

I’ve made some effort to refactor templates using old string functions in recent weeks, but the idea of actual deletion hasn't always gone down well at TfD. I’ll think about another nomination. User:GKFX^talk 17:44, 10 June 2021 (UTC)

As I just discovered when importing this module on a sister project, findpagetext will throw a big ugly (and misleading) Lua error when the wikipage in its first argument doesn't exist, because the module doesn't check that it exists before getting its contents and doesn't try to catch this kind of error.

If you see this text the bug was fixed.

Simply checking that :getContent() didn't return nil or empty and returning nomatch before handing it to mw.ustring.find() is probably enough. Xover (talk) 17:30, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

I tweaked the sandbox to fix this. I'll leave updating the main module for a day or two in case anyone sees other issues. Here is a tweaked version of your test above.

• Module:String2 • Module:String2/sandbox • different (diff)
• {{#invoke:String2 |findpagetext |text=Youghiogheny |title=NoSuchPage |nomatch=If you see this text the bug was fixed.}} → If you see this text the bug was fixed.
• {{#invoke:String2 |findpagetext |text=Youghiogheny |title=No[SuchPage |nomatch=If you see this text the bug was fixed.}} → If you see this text the bug was fixed.
• {{#invoke:String2/sandbox |findpagetext |text=Youghiogheny |title=NoSuchPage |nomatch=If you see this text the bug was fixed.}} → If you see this text the bug was fixed.
• {{#invoke:String2/sandbox |findpagetext |text=Youghiogheny |title=No[SuchPage |nomatch=If you see this text the bug was fixed.}} → If you see this text the bug was fixed.

Johnuniq (talk) 06:11, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks! I tried a couple more random edge and gigo cases (empty regular wikipage, Special:BlankPage, Special:Watchlist) and nothing blew up.

BTW, only vaguely related and not a bug as such, but I noticed that when you pass in an empty |text= you get empty output (because the check for this case returns nil) instead of the nomatch string, which was unexpected. My expectation for this would be that it is a nomatch, because an empty search string isn't really "invalid" as such, it just doesn't match anything. I could make the opposite argument too, of course, but it might be worth taking another look at when to return nil and when to use nomatch at some point. --Xover (talk) 08:10, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I wondered about that but decided to keep the original. I doubt if there is any usage of the "feature" but if a template used {{find page text}}, it might easily pass its parameter as |text=. In that case, templates often pass empty text to mean "no parameter" which sort-of makes an empty string result sensible. Johnuniq (talk) 09:01, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

I updated the main module so the above checks now work. Johnuniq (talk) 06:35, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Now supports named parameters: source, target, plain, nomatch; and UTC characters:

* <code><nowiki>{{#invoke:String2 |posnq |source=This is a piece of text |target=ece}}</nowiki></code> → {{#invoke:String2 |posnq |source=This is a piece of text |target=ece}}
* <code><nowiki>{{#invoke:String2 |posnq |source=This is a piece of text |target=%s |plain=true}}</nowiki></code> → {{#invoke:String2 |posnq |source=This is a piece of text |target=%s |plain=true}}
* <code><nowiki>{{#invoke:String2 |posnq |source=This is a piece of text |target=%s |plain=false}}</nowiki></code> → {{#invoke:String2 |posnq |source=This is a piece of text |target=%s |plain=false}}
* <code><nowiki>{{#invoke:String2 |posnq |source=This is a piece of text |target=ece |nomatch=0}}</nowiki></code> → {{#invoke:String2 |posnq |source=This is a piece of text |target=ece |plain=false |nomatch=0}}
* <code><nowiki>{{#invoke:String2 |posnq |source=This is a piece of text |target=xyz |nomatch=0}}</nowiki></code> → {{#invoke:String2 |posnq |source=This is a piece of text |target=xyz |nomatch=0}}
* <code><nowiki>{{#invoke:String2 |posnq |This is a piece of text |" of" |true |0}}</nowiki></code> → {{#invoke:String2 |posnq |This is a piece of text |" of" |true |0}}
* <code><nowiki>{{#invoke:String2 |posnq |This is a piece of text |"  of" |true |0}}</nowiki></code> → {{#invoke:String2 |posnq |This is a piece of text |"  of" |true |0}}
* <code><nowiki>{{#invoke:String2 |posnq |source=Meet at Café Nero |target=afé}}</nowiki></code> → {{#invoke:String2 |posnq |source=Meet at Café Nero |target=afé}}

Any bug reports welcome. --RexxS (talk) 00:08, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Now deleted, per TfD outcome. Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 16:18, 7 January 2022 (UTC)

The posnq function from this template has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. User:GKFX^talk 15:37, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Now deleted. Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 16:23, 7 January 2022 (UTC)