Template:Str ≠ len
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This is the {{str ≠ len}} meta-template.
It helps other templates check if a string is "not equal" vs. "equal" to a given length.
Note! For most usage cases it might be better to use {{str ≥ len}}. (See the see also section below.)
Usage
This template takes 3 to 4 unnamed parameters.
Here is how to check if the string "abcde" is exactly 5 characters:
{{str ≠ len | abcde | 5
| Not equal.
| Equal.
}}
Which returns this:
- Equal.
Templates have a problem to handle parameter data that contains equal signs "=". But that is easily solved by using numbered parameters. Here we check if the string "ab=cde" is exactly 100 characters:
{{str ≠ len
| 1 = ab=cde
| 2 = 100
| 3 = Not equal, "!=".
| 4 = Equal, "=".
}}
Which returns this:
- Not equal, "!=".
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:
{{str ≠ len
| 1 = A string
| 2 = A length
| 3 = Data to return/render when "not equally long".
| 4 = Data to return/render when "equally long".
}}
Empty or undefined strings are considered to be of 0 length.
Length values below 0 are considered to be 0.
Technical details
This template would be equivalent to templates named {{str != len}} or {{str == len}}, but we can't use those template names since they don't work well in MediaWiki.
Templates have problems to handle parameter data that contains pipes "|", unless the pipe is inside another template {{name|param1}} or inside a piped link [[Help:Template|help]]. Thus templates can not handle wikitables as input unless you escape them by using the {{!}} template. This makes it hard to use wikitables as parameters to templates. Instead the usual solution is to use "HTML wikimarkup" for the table code, which is more robust.