Help talk:Substitution

I don't understand the limitation, in particular, the second sentence of Help:Substitution#Limitation. I'd like to use subst inside a ref on {{TODAY}} or {{Date}} to get 29 January 2016 or 29 January 2016 Reading it, I have no idea why this limitation exists (is it a feature, bug or both?), and what {{safesubst:#tag:ref|content of the reference}} will do. It does this outside of a ref: ^[1]... Oh I think I get it, now that I try to explain how I don't get it.

I guess I can do substitution inside the "content of the reference" , e.g.

I guess {{safesubst:#tag:ref|{{subst:TODAY}} or {{subst:Date}}}} will expand the templates and then place that expanded text within ref tags. Result: ^[2] .

OK, so how to clarify? The example given needs to use subst. I gave it a try. Glad User:Carfois added it a year ago. --Elvey^(t•c) 01:12, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Could someone who understands this material in depth, and who has good technical writing skills, please overhaul everything from the "Recursive substitution" section though "Limitation" (aside from "Documenting substitution", which is clear)?

I can only make sense of about 60% of that material, despite being intelligent, a systems and network administrator and Web coder since the mid-90s, a Wikipedian for over 10 years, and a template-editor almost since that bit was introduced (and an editor of templates the whole time). It's basically written like a man page from the pre-GNU days, a crib sheet for people who are already experts at what the documentation is about.

It needs a table of common uses cases and example code and output that show entire templates, not fragments. I can't even tell if there's a way to have a template work fine if transcluded, work fine if subst'd, and subst "cleanly" and recursively (i.e. leave plan content behind with no {{#if:{{{foo|}}}}} stuff in the page for the next editor) if it is subst'd. The doc talks about all of these aspects in different places and in inconsistent terms, without ever just answering the question directly, even though it must be a common one.

Also trying to figure out if there's a way to get templates to subst themselves automatically (I know can have them save with subst: in them so they'll at least do it the next time the section or the whole page is saved, but it would be advantageous for them to be forcibly substituted sometimes, without having to throw up melodramatic red warnings. If not, is there a bug open to fix it? I can't check; I have never been able to login to PHabricator; it always throws an LDAP error at me, and of course I can report this bug because I can't login).

For my work, the immediate need is to ensure that single-source templates are subst'd, cleanly. My rede on this is that the best we can do is document that they should be subst'd, and include code such that, if they are not, they include subst code when saved, so that the next time the page or section is saved it will be subst'd. (We could include a huge red warning instead, but that seems overkill for something that trivial).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  11:28, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

If substitution could be forced, we'd set this up for templates like {{subst:uw-vandalism1}} etc. - but we can't. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:55, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Was hoping there was some "secret trick".  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  20:33, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

#tag:ref doesn't seem to support ref names.
Example:

{{#tag:ref|{{cite web |title=Municipality/City: {{safesubst:#invoke:Wikibase|label|{{safesubst:#invoke:Wikidata|pageId}}}} |url=http://nap.psa.gov.ph/activestats/psgc/municipality.asp?muncode={{str_sub|{{safesubst:#Property:P988}}|0|6}}000&regcode={{str_sub|{{safesubst:#Property:P988}}|0|2}}&provcode={{str_sub|{{safesubst:#Property:P988}}|2|2}} |work=PSGC Interactive |publisher=Philippine Statistics Authority |accessdate={{safesubst:TODAY}} |location=Makati City, Philippines}}}}

works all right:

^[1]

But I want to put the ref name as nscb. I tested using #tag:ref name="nscb" instead:

{{#tag:ref name="nscb"|{{cite web |title=Municipality/City: {{safesubst:#invoke:Wikibase|label|{{safesubst:#invoke:Wikidata|pageId}}}} |url=http://nap.psa.gov.ph/activestats/psgc/municipality.asp?muncode={{str_sub|{{safesubst:#Property:P988}}|0|6}}000&regcode={{str_sub|{{safesubst:#Property:P988}}|0|2}}&provcode={{str_sub|{{safesubst:#Property:P988}}|2|2}} |work=PSGC Interactive |publisher=Philippine Statistics Authority |accessdate={{safesubst:TODAY}} |location=Makati City, Philippines}}}}

but it adds ref name tags at the start and end of the citation:

<ref name='nscb'>"Municipality/City:". PSGC Interactive. Makati City, Philippines: Philippine Statistics Authority. Retrieved 17 October 2016.</ref>

What is the code to add only the ref name at the start and the closing </ref> tag only at the end of the citation? Thanks. Sanglahi86 (talk) 10:34, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

@Sanglahi86: Looking at Help:Magic words#Formatting, the syntax should be...

{{#tag:ref|{{cite web |title=Municipality/City: |url=http://nap.psa.gov.ph/activestats/psgc/municipality.asp?muncode={{str_sub||0|6}}000&regcode={{str_sub||0|2}}&provcode={{str_sub||2|2}} |work=PSGC Interactive |publisher=Philippine Statistics Authority |accessdate=17 October 2016 |location=Makati City, Philippines}}|name=nscb}}

...with the name moved to the end. A quick test: there's a reference defined here ^[1] and used again here ^[1]. -- John of Reading (talk) 11:13, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the information. Sanglahi86 (talk) 13:07, 17 October 2016 (UTC)

This help request has been answered. If you need more help, you can ask another question on your talk page, contact the responding user(s) directly on their user talk page, or consider visiting the Teahouse.

(If this is not the right forum in which to post a question about writing a subst'ed conditional template, please point me to the right place.)

I'm a new template writer, and when I subst a template I thought that one of the benefits was that all the conditionals and magic words and other such things get removed, leaving whatever they generate: plain text, wikilinks, and so on. But I'm transcluding my new template and it's leaving some pretty ugly stuff in the expanded wikicode. The rendering on the page looks just fine, it's just the wikicode that is ugly, but I thought that stuff was supposed to all just disappear.

Template:x2 review help is a template designed for user talk pages, and generates an invitation to join our translation project. It's mostly boilerplate that just gets plonked onto the user talk page, but there are some params to conditionally generate text, like what language we're talking about, and a few others. It also generates the Section title, and even *that* has an #ifexpr in it; very ugly.

Am I doing something wrong? Is there a way to just generate plain text, and get rid of all the ugly conditional code? An example of the template in use is available at User:Mathglot/sandbox/test Farsi x2 review. Feel free to alter that page to run further tests if needed. I'd love to know what I'm doing wrong.

Thanks in advance! Mathglot (talk) 03:57, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot: Hey! It looks like you're after recursive substitution. I recently made an edit to a similar template for almost the same thing. If you give me a few minutes, I'll make an edit to your template that should sort things out. :) TheDragonFire (talk) 06:04, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

@TheDragonFire: Wow, I never thought of that, good catch! Plus I'm learning something. Very kind of you to fix the template for me, while you're doing that, I'll read up on recursive substitution. Thanks again! Mathglot (talk) 06:09, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

@TheDragonFire: I see you've made an edit; wasn't sure if you were done or not; I notice an "unrecognized '{'" in the test in my sandbox: #Test 2. I might be able to locate it, or are you still busy with the template? Mathglot (talk) 06:40, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

@Mathglot: Yeah, I've partially reverted my changes as something is breaking with the article section. Feel free to keep editing the template, I'll fix it to fully use recursive substitution when I figure out what I'm doing wrong. TheDragonFire (talk) 06:46, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

@TheDragonFire: I can't thank you enough for what you've already done. Way more complex than I thought, and will have to read through it carefully to try to understand. Almost all the cruft is gone, *especially* the junk in the section title, which was really important. I can certainly live with it like this, in case it ends up being too much of a time-waster to track down the last bit of it, and I thank you again. Mathglot (talk) 06:48, 31 May 2017 (UTC)

Can someone just tell me what I actually need to know about subst in order to not fuck up when I use it? Something like When you see subst:, it means the template is going to substitute one thing for another for you. Just copy the whole damn thing and insert it where it belongs. You don't have to make any changes. Or what? I don't have the technical knowledge to be able to understand this page. —valereee (talk) 13:13, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

This stems from a conversation on my talk page. I responded there before noticing this message. Graham87 13:37, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

Is there a way to easily replace {{template...}} with {{subst:template...}} in all pages? WP:AWB can do that, but it's quite complicated for what's basically just one bit of information, especially since it's something we want to encourage. ◅ Sebastian 08:59, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

@SebastianHelm: If the consensus is that a particular template should always be substituted in future, then see Template:Always substitute. If you add {{Always substitute|auto=yes}} to the template documentation, then a bot will make sure they get cleaned up. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:57, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

Cool, thanks! That's a very sensible solution. ◅ Sebastian 16:07, 5 November 2020 (UTC)

What about adding alwayssubst=yes to the template documentation in TemplateData?--BoldLuis (talk) 14:49, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

There are quite a few cases of failed substitution within references that need to be cleaned up, found with insource:/\{\{subst:/ -insource:"Anchor comment" -insource:"rfd". Letcord (talk) 18:32, 2 April 2022 (UTC)

Why not just have a tag <nosubst> whose content is removed by subst:, so it is only displayed if the template is transcluded? (a functionality somewhat similar to <noinclude> and <includeonly>)

This way, you can display a big ugly warning to the user who misses the subst:, add the page to a special category or whatever you want. Much less intrusive than the other proposed changes.

From phab:T4003 BoldLuis (talk) 14:47, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

You already brought this up at Help talk:Template#.3Cnosubst.3E - please observe WP:MULTI. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:17, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

{{R}} has been deprecated since 2010 (pending various conditions, which were never met), but limps along anyway. Worse, the community deprecated all inline parenthetical referencing in 2022, but {{r}} is dependent on {{rp}}, which is a form of (partial) inline parenthetical referencing. We need a way to cleanly subst {{r}} into its constituent <ref>...</ref>{{rp}} parts, so that further replacement work can be done, e.g. with {{sfnp}} or some other solution.

I've copied the current code of {{r}} into {{r/sandbox}}, and done the same with its substemplates, and changed the sandbox code of all of them to refer to the sandbox versions of the subtemplates. This could use attention from someone already skilled in the pitfalls of getting complex templates to substitute cleanly without leaving behind conditional garbage and other problems.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  17:08, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Some early example on the main page:{{subst:#switch:{{NUMBEROFADMINS}}|1=Foo|1000=Bar|#default=Baz}}

Ok, lets plug-in the current number of admins. {{NUMBEROFADMINS}} = 847

Adjustment 1:{{subst:#switch:{{NUMBEROFADMINS}}|1=Foo|847=Bar|#default=Baz}}

Result: Baz

"Baz" ???, What happened to "Bar". (Hmm. What is the point that particular code example is intended to show, explain or clarify?)

Lets try something else:

Adjustment 2:{{subst:#switch:{{NUMBEROFADMINS}}|847=Foo|{{NUMBEROFADMINS}}=Bar|#default=Baz}}

Result: Bar :-/

Ok, so the {{NUMBEROFADMINS}} part is uses as is(text) in the subst case.

I'm sure there is a reason for that. But it also completely trashes whatever I think I understand about subst at that point. (and this is just one of those cases ... as such after years of meddling with MediaWiki I'm still completely mystified about subst: -- Other than its really-basic/simple uses.)

MvGulik (talk) 20:41, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

@MvGulik: When there are several nested levels, subst: only works as expected if you do it from the lowest level outwards. If you do it from the outermost level inwards, you will often get unexpected results. Try this:

{{#switch:{{subst:NUMBEROFADMINS}}|1=Foo|1000=Bar|#default=Baz}}

or this:

{{subst:#switch:{{subst:NUMBEROFADMINS}}|1=Foo|1000=Bar|#default=Baz}}

--Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:11, 4 December 2024 (UTC)

I kinda new that (now at a better level though). But lacking confident/understanding in the whole subst stuff. I never used it in that way. One thing that only became clear (or so I think) in the last days it the significant code-style difference when it comes to general inclusions {{subst:...}} vs parameter processing {{{..|subst:}}}. Related to this I think this is one part where the main-page fails. It never makes an actual concise note/warning about this at the intro. Which in my view would have helped at lot if such info was put in the main-section. Its kinda left up to the reader, which is not suppose to know anything yet about subst's (intended audience), to figure this out. The same thing 'kinda' also applies for the importance of subst's ordering, like you show in your example, or the subst's will just not work as expected. MvGulik (talk) 11:26, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

After seeing safesubst being eaten too, and again getting totally bewildered by the related help pages ... I'm totally done with anything subst or safesubst related. (and that is a @*#^&@ understatement). MvGulik (talk) 20:48, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

Crap. Never had any reason to look into Scribunto before, until recently. Only to find out it uses are heavily salted with substitutions. O well, guess I can trow that MW-feature also in my personal trash bin.

(Terminology might look cool and sophisticated in help texts. But in my view is indicative to explaining language X, while only speaking in language X.)

MvGulik (talk) 09:43, 27 December 2024 (UTC)