PmWiki | PITS / 01208

Summary: a space in Author field links to the Profiles homepage

Created: 2010-06-22 03:13

Status: Open

Category: Bug

From: SchreyP

Assigned:

Priority: 11

Version: tested 2.2.15, 2.2.16 and 2.2.17

OS: n.a.

Description: A space in the Author field, something you do not directly notice, creates a link [[~ ]] which routes today to the homepage of group Profiles:

[[~ ]].

Profiles.

I recent saw two entries with this:

latest update on PmWiki.RSS in Site.AllRecentChangesShort
Author field of PITS:01207

I think this should be translated to an empty author resulting in a "?" in RecentChanges pages.

SchreyP June 22, 2010, at 03:18 AM

Currently, [[~ in links is just considered a shortcut for [[Profiles/ so it is not weird that [[~]] lead to [[Profiles/]], test: Profiles. While it might be possible to change it, I'm not sure it could be done without breaking existing wikis. Moreover, the single ~ tilde in my mind means my own profile page, like the unix shell shortcut for /home/user directory -- so should we disable the link, or change it, or leave it as it is now? :-) --Petko November 09, 2010, at 04:07 AM

Hi Petko (welcome back), I agree with your comments above - the behaviour for [[~]] is ok. But the behaviour when there is a space behind the ~ is not ok - so the behaviour for [[~ ]]. In my opinion this should be considered as if you did not give any author entry (empty author field), resulting in a "?" in RecentChanges pages. I'm sure the space was added by accident in entries mentioned above. -- SchreyP November 10, 2010, at 02:53 PM

space should make no difference?
[[~ simon]] [[! Bug]]
simon Bug

I don't want to change how spaces are interpreted inside square brackets -- there could be legitimate uses relying on the current state. I think the "problem" you noticed is due to the fact that we require an author name for most pages, but these visitors didn't want to provide one, so they entered just a space. In the RecentChanges listings, a link to "Profiles/" and a single "?" provide about the same information, so it doesn't bother me that much, but if it bothers you, we could write a recipe to block these posts (unfortunately, then you'll see more than you expect users "qwerty", "asdf" and "123" :-)). This very minor annoyance happens extremely rarely, and adding complexity to the program just to fix this isn't justified. --Petko November 11, 2010, at 04:12 PM