Module:Separated entries

This module is rated as beta, and is ready for widespread use. It is still new and should be used with some caution to ensure the results are as expected.

This Lua module is used on 930,000+ pages, so changes to it will be widely noticed. Please test any changes in the module's /sandbox or /testcases subpages. Please consider discussing changes on the talk page before implementing them.

Usage

Module:Separated entries serves as a template front-end to mw.text.listToText. It takes any number of positional parameters and pieces them together with |separator=. |conjunction= can be optionally defined if a different separator is desired between the last and second last items. Leading and trailing whitespace is stripped; if the |separator= should contain spaces, use the HTML escape code  . Separated entries does not raise any errors by design.

{{#invoke:Separated entries|main|separator=...}}

-- This module takes positional parameters as input and concatenates them with
-- an optional separator. The final separator (the "conjunction") can be
-- specified independently, enabling natural-language lists like
-- "foo, bar, baz and qux".

local compressSparseArray = require('Module:TableTools').compressSparseArray
local p = {}

function p._main(args)
	local separator = args.separator
		-- Decode (convert to Unicode) HTML escape sequences, such as "&#32;" for space.
		and mw.text.decode(args.separator) or ''
	local conjunction = args.conjunction and mw.text.decode(args.conjunction) or separator
	-- Discard named parameters.
	local values = compressSparseArray(args)
	return mw.text.listToText(values, separator, conjunction)
end

local function makeInvokeFunction(separator, conjunction)
	return function (frame)
		local args = require('Module:Arguments').getArgs(frame)
		args.separator = separator or args.separator
		args.conjunction = conjunction or args.conjunction
		return p._main(args)
	end
end

p.main = makeInvokeFunction()
p.br = makeInvokeFunction('<br />')
p.comma = makeInvokeFunction(mw.message.new('comma-separator'):plain())

return p