Module:Buffer/doc

Usage

This module was originally developed to optimize string concatenation in Module:Asbox but can be used in any module.

The interface for Module:Buffer objects is similar to that of mw.html objects in that you may build complex strings with independent child nodes. In most cases, you may use Buffer objects like a normal string, including using .. operator (though better to use Buffer:_ since the concatenation operator is over 10 times slower). It can also be inserted into mw.html objects via mw.html:node (though not mw.html:wikitext because of type checking). (See also #usage with string/mw.text libraries)

require('Module:Buffer')

require('Module:Buffer')( ... )

require('Module:Buffer')( _G, ... )

Use the module directly as a function to create a new Module:Buffer object (i.e. there is no 'main').

Some functions are available only if Module:Buffer is initialized with the global variable _G prior to the creation of any Buffer objects (see #advanced functions for more detail).

If initialized with _G then any varargs will be passed to Buffer:_G( \ )


. If initialized without then any varargs will by passed to Buffer:_( ... )


. You may also omit initialization and use any Buffer object function directly on the module—i.e require('Module:Buffer'):function{...} is equivalent to require('Module:Buffer')():function{...}.

Saving the module locally, e.g. local Buffer = require'Module:Buffer' , though perfectly valid, is often unnecessary since all Buffer objects can create new buffers via Buffer:_in

Buffer

Scribunto manual

Calling the Buffer object created by this module (as opposed to the module itself) is basically shorthand for table.concat( Buffer, ... ) , or with no args, tostring( Buffer ) .

However, if Buffer contains values inserted via Buffer:_ that are raw (see section) or are out-of-sequence (i.e. numerical keys ignored by ipairs), then the result would be the same as ''empty-buffer'':_all( Buffer )


( ... )—which would iterate through all keys in numerical order, converting each item to a string before concatenating.

As a side note, if no args are passed , the the result of the concatenation are cached by the Buffer,

Buffer:_

Buffer:_( value, pos, raw )
Buffer:_( value, raw )

Inserts a value if it is valid. The pos argument is similar to that of table.insert( table, pos, value ) , except in two cases: 1) the first

valid values

===require('Module:Buffer')():_ Each time you call buffer() it will return a new buffer object of type table, which you may save like so:

local buffer = require('Module:Buffer')
local string1, string2 = 

Example

For example, take the following snippet from the p.templatepage() function of Module:Asbox.

content = buffer(page.text ~= 'Stub' and require('Module:Asbox stubtree').subtree{args = {pagename = page.text}})
	:_in'\n== About this template ==\nThis template is used to identify a':_(args.subject):_'stub':_(args.qualifier):_out' '
	:_'. It uses {{[[Template:Asbox|asbox]]}}, which is a meta-template designed to ease the process of creating and maintaining stub templates.\n=== Usage ===\nTyping <code>{{'
	:_(page.text == 'Stub' and 'stub' or page.text)
	:_'}}</code> produces the message shown at the beginning, and adds the article to the following categor'
	:_(#stubCats > 1 and 'ies' or 'y')
	:_':\n'()

That snippet is basically equivalent to:

content = page.text ~= 'Stub' and
	require('Module:Asbox stubtree').subtree{args = {pagename = page.text}}
	or ''
content = content .. '\n== About this template ==\nThis template is used to identify a'
if args.subject then
	content = content .. ' ' .. args.subject
end
content = content .. ' stub'
if args.qualifier then
	content = content .. ' ' .. args.qualifier
end
content = content
	.. '. It uses {{[[Template:Asbox|asbox]]}}, which is a meta-template designed to ease the process of creating and maintaining stub templates.\n=== Usage ===\nTyping <code>{{'
	.. (page.text == 'Stub' and 'stub' or page.text)
	.. '}}</code> produces the message shown at the beginning, and adds the article to the following categor'
	.. (#stubCats > 1 and 'ies' or 'y')
	.. ':\n'