View source for Template:Str ≥ len/doc

This is the {{tl|str ≥ len}} meta-template.

It helps other templates check if a string is "longer or equally long" vs. "shorter" than a given length.

=== Usage ===

This template takes 3 to 4 unnamed parameters.

Here is how to check if the string "abcde" is 4 characters or more:

<pre>
{{str ≥ len | abcde | 4
| Equal or longer.
| Shorter.
}}
</pre>

Which returns this:

:{{str ≥ len | abcde | 4
| Equal or longer.
| Shorter.
}}

Templates have a problem to handle parameter data that contains equal signs "<code>=</code>". But that is easily solved by using numbered parameters. Here we check if the string "ab=cde" is 100 characters or more:

<pre>
{{str ≥ len 
| 1 = ab=cde 
| 2 = 100
| 3 = Equal "=" or longer.
| 4 = Shorter, not "=".
}}
</pre>

Which returns this:

:{{str ≥ len 
| 1 = ab=cde 
| 2 = 100
| 3 = Equal "=" or longer.
| 4 = Shorter, not "=".
}}

It probably is a good habit to always use the numbered parameters, since you might not know beforehand exactly how the data will look that your template will feed to this meta-template.

=== Parameters ===

Detailed parameter explanation:

<pre>
{{str ≥ len 
| 1 = A string, 0-500 characters long.
| 2 = 0 - 500
| 3 = Data to return/render when "longer than or equally long".
| 4 = Data to return/render when "shorter than".
}}
</pre>

Empty or undefined strings are considered to be of 0 length. Strings longer than 500 are not truncated to 500.

Length values below 0 are considered to be 0. Length values above 500 are considered to be 500.

Thus a string of 500 length or more are always considered to be "longer than or equally long", no matter what length value it is compared with.

=== Technical details ===
The potential alternative templates names <nowiki>{{str >= len}} or (for the opposite) {{str < len}}</nowiki> do not work in MediaWiki.

Even though this is a string handling template it uses very efficient code. (While some of the other string handling templates are probably so heavy on the servers that we perhaps should not use them.)

[[Help:Template|Templates]] have problems to handle parameter data that contains pipes "<code>|</code>", unless the pipe is inside another template <code><nowiki>{{name|param1}}</nowiki></code> or inside a piped link <code><nowiki>[[Help:Template|help]]</nowiki></code>. Thus templates can not handle [[Help:Table|wikitables]] as input unless you escape them by using the {{tn|!}} template. This makes it hard to use wikitables as parameters to templates. Instead the usual solution is to use "[[Help:HTML in wikitext|HTML wikimarkup]]" for the table code, which is more robust.
<noinclude>[[category:template documentation|{{PAGENAME}}]]</noinclude>