Module:String2/doc

The module String2 contains a number of string manipulation functions that are much less commonly used than those in Module:String. Because Module:String is cascade-protected (some of its functions are used on the Main Page), it cannot be edited or maintained by template editors, only by admins. While it is true that string-handling functions rarely need maintenance, it is useful to allow that by template editors where possible, so this module may be used by template editors to develop novel functionality.

The module contains three case-related calls that convert strings to first letter uppercase, sentence case or title case and two calls that are useful for working with substrings. There are other utility calls that strip leading zeros from padded numbers and transform text so that it is not interpreted as wikitext, and several other calls that solve specific problems for template developers such as finding the position of a piece of text on a given page.

The functions are designed with the possibility of working with text returned from Wikidata in mind. However, a call to Wikidata may return empty, so the functions should generally fail gracefully if supplied with a missing or blank input parameter, rather than throwing an error.

trim
The trim function simply trims whitespace characters from the start and end of the string.

title
The title function capitalises the first letter of each word in the text, apart from a number of short words recommended by The U.S. Government Printing Office Style Manual: a, an, the, at, by, for, in, of, on, to, up, and, as, but, or, and nor.

sentence
The sentence function finds the first letter and capitalises it, then renders the rest of the text in lower case. It works properly with text containing wiki markup. Compare  &rarr;  with   &rarr; Action game. Piped wiki-links are handled as well: So are lists:
 * &rarr;

ucfirst
The ucfirst function is similar to sentence; it renders the first alphabetical character in upper case, but leaves the capitalisation of the rest of the text unaltered. This is useful if the text contains proper nouns, but it will not regularise sentences that are ALLCAPS, for example. It also works with text containing piped wiki-links and with html lists.

findlast

 * Function findlast finds the last item in a list.
 * The first unnamed parameter is the list. The list is trimmed of leading and trailing whitespace
 * The second, optional unnamed parameter is the list separator (default = comma space). The separator is not trimmed of leading and trailing whitespace (so that leading or trailing spaces can be used).
 * It returns the whole list if the separator is not found.

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

posnq

 * posnq (position, no quotes) returns the numerical start position of the first occurrence of one piece of text ("target") inside another ("source"). UTC characters are supported.
 * It returns nil by default if no match is found, or if either parameter is blank. If no match is found it can return the value of an optional "nomatch" parameter.
 * It takes the text to be searched in as the first unnamed parameter (or source), which is trimmed.
 * It takes the text to match as the second unnamed parameter (or target), which is trimmed and any double quotes " are stripped out. That allows spaces at the beginning or end of the match string to be included in a consistent manner.
 * It can take an optional third unnamed parameter (or plain), which is trimmed. If it's set to false, then the search accepts Lua pattern-matching for the target, otherwise a plain search is used.
 * It can take an optional fourth unnamed parameter (or nomatch), which is trimmed. This value is returned if no match occurs. Setting 0 makes the output compatible with the find function in Module:String.
 * Examples

split
The split function splits text at boundaries specified by separator and returns the chunk for the index idx (starting at 1). It can use positional parameters or named parameters (but these should not be mixed): Any double quotes (") in the separator parameter are stripped out, which allows spaces and wikitext like  to be passed. Use   for the pipe character.

If the optional plain parameter is set to  then separator is treated as a Lua pattern. The default is plain=true, i.e. normal text matching.

The index parameter is optional; it defaults to the first chunk of text.

String split is a convenience wrapper for the split function.

stripZeros
The stripZeros functions finds the first number in a string of text and strips leading zeros, but retains a zero which is followed by a decimal point. For example: "0940" &rarr; "940"; "Year: 0023" &rarr; "Year: 23"; "00.12" &rarr; "0.12"

nowiki
The nowiki function ensures that a string of text is treated by the MediaWiki software as just a string, not code. It trims leading and trailing whitespace.

val2percent
The val2percent functions scans through a string, passed as either the first unnamed parameter or |txt=, and converts each number it finds into a percentage, then returns the resulting string.

one2a
The one2a function scans through a string, passed as either the first unnamed parameter or |txt=, and converts each occurrence of 'one ' into either 'a ' or 'an ', then returns the resultant string.

findpagetext
The findpagetext function returns the position of a piece of text in the wikitext source of a page. It takes up to four parameters:
 * First positional parameter or |text is the text to be searched for.
 * Optional parameter |title is the page title, defaults to the current page.
 * Optional parameter |plain is either true for a plain search (default), or false for a Lua pattern search.
 * Optional parameter |nomatch is the value returned when no match is found; default is nothing.


 * Examples
 * → {{#invoke:String2 |findpagetext |text=%{%{coord |title=Boston Bridge |plain=f |nomatch=not found}}
 * → {{#invoke:String2 |findpagetext |text=%{%{coord |title=Boston Bridge |plain=f |nomatch=not found}}
 * → {{#invoke:String2 |findpagetext |text=%{%{coord |title=Boston Bridge |plain=f |nomatch=not found}}
 * → {{#invoke:String2 |findpagetext |text=%{%{coord |title=Boston Bridge |plain=f |nomatch=not found}}
 * → {{#invoke:String2 |findpagetext |text=%{%{coord |title=Boston Bridge |plain=f |nomatch=not found}}
 * → {{#invoke:String2 |findpagetext |text=%{%{coord |title=Boston Bridge |plain=f |nomatch=not found}}
 * → {{#invoke:String2 |findpagetext |text=%{%{coord |title=Boston Bridge |plain=f |nomatch=not found}}

The search is case-sensitive, so Lua pattern matching is needed to find  or. The last example finds  and. The penultimate example finds a wiki-link.

The Template:Findpagetext is a convenience wrapper for this function.

strip
The strip function strips the first positional parameter of the characters or pattern supplied in the second positional parameter.

matchAny
The matchAny function returns the index of the first positional parameter to match the source parameter. If the plain parameter is set to false (default true) then the search strings are Lua patterns. This can usefully be put in a switch statement to pick a switch case based on which pattern a string matches. Returns the empty string if nothing matches, for use in.

returns 2.

hyphen2dash
Extracted hyphen_to_dash function from Module:Citation/CS1.

Converts a hyphen to a dash under certain conditions. The hyphen must separate like items; unlike items are returned unmodified. These forms are modified:
 * letter - letter (A - B)
 * digit - digit (4-5)
 * digit separator digit - digit separator digit (4.1-4.5 or 4-1-4-5)
 * letterdigit - letterdigit (A1-A5) (an optional separator between letter and digit is supported – a.1-a.5 or a-1-a-5)
 * digitletter - digitletter (5a - 5d) (an optional separator between letter and digit is supported – 5.a-5.d or 5-a-5-d)

Any other forms are returned unmodified.

The input string may be a comma- or semicolon-separated list. Semicolons are converted to commas.

returns.

returns.

Accept-this-as-written markup is supported, e.g.  returns.

By default, a normal space is inserted after the separating comma in lists. An optional second parameter allows to change this to a different character (i.e. a thin space or hair space).

Usage

 * - Capitalizes the first character and shifts the rest to lowercase
 * Although similar to magic words'  function, this call works even with piped wiki-links because it searches beyond leading brackets and other non-alphanumeric characters.
 * It now also recognises when it has an html list passed to it and capitalises the first alphabetic letter beyond the list item markup and any piped links that may be there.
 * - Capitalizes the first alphabetic character and leaves the rest unaltered
 * Works with piped wiki-links and html lists
 * - Capitalizes all words, except for,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  , and.
 * - Removes leading padding zeros from the first number it finds in the string
 * - Renders the string as plain text without wikicode

Parameters
These functions take one unnamed parameter comprising (or invoking as a string) the text to be manipulated:
 * title
 * sentence
 * ucfirst

Posnq
Template:Posnq is a convenience wrapper for the posnq function.

Stringsplit
Template:Stringsplit is a convenience wrapper for the split function. Modules may return strings with | as separators like this:  → Lua patterns can allow splitting at classes of characters such as punctuation: Or split on anything that isn't a letter (no is treated as false): Named parameters force the trimming of leading and trailing spaces in the parameters and are generally clearer when used:

One2a
Template:One2a is a convenience wrapper for the one2a function.

Capitalisation is kept. Aimed for usage with Convert.


 * → 1 ft
 * → 2.54 cm
 * → 2.54 cm