excerpt_more tweak

[demetris]

I believe this should be considered and accepted or rejected before 2.9 final, that is, before people start using the new EXCERPT_MORE filter.

Currently the MORE that is added to the autogenerated excerpt is:

{SPACE}[...]

(EXCERPT_MORE is added to the array with array_push(), and then the array is imploded with SPACE as a string.)

However, the filterable EXCERPT_MORE is just:

[...]

I think the two should be the same.

Here is a case in which the current behaviour is problematic: I want to replace the default EXCERPT_MORE with a simple ellipsis, expecting to get:

Blah Blah.  This is an excerpt autogenerated by{ELLIPSIS}

Instead, I get:

Blah Blah.  This is an excerpt autogenerated by{SPACE}{ELLIPSIS}

To get this space removed, you have to go and apply filtering to a lower level, which I think defeats the purpose of introducing a user-friendly EXCERPT_MORE filter. (On the other hand, if folks do want a space there, there is no easier thing than starting your custom EXCERPT_MORE with a space.)

I’m attaching a patch — more as a demonstration of what I am after, as I don’t know what is the proper way to make this change to wp_trim_excerpt.

[demetris]

excerpt_more tweak, to make the filterable excerpt_more also include the space that WP adds before it.

[automattor]

(In [12414]) Make the excerpt_more filter include the space. Props demetris. fixes #11456

[hakre]

Why is there the concatnation in the commit? ' ' . '[...]' seems hard to read, ' [...]' should do the job as well (line 1813 in [12414]).

[nacin]

Discussed on #wordpress-dev. Done like that to make it obvious the space is there and is deliberate.

​https://irclogs.wordpress.org/chanlog.php?channel=wordpress-dev&day=2009-12-16#m44966

[demetris]

@hakre:

LOL. My concatenation is rather unpopular. And I got rboren into trouble with it. :-D

From the wp-dev channel:

(6:43:37 PM) filosofo: uh, why ' ' . '[...]' in r12414 ?

(6:44:01 PM) filosofo: how is that better than ' [...]'?

SNIP

(6:52:03 PM) rboren: filosofo: Thought about changing it but then thought it made the rather extraneous nature of the space more apparent.

(6:52:11 PM) rboren: Would like to just get rid of it though.

SNIP

(7:01:24 PM) demetris: rboren: filosofo: re r12414 -- My patch split the string into two for the reason rboren said. To make it obvious where the space was added, and also as an indication to people hacking the code in the future, that this space is there on purpose; it is not a typo, for example. But I am not a coder myself, so I dont know if this is good practice.

[filosofo]

echo implode(' ', explode(' ', 
'I' . ' ' . 'thought' . ' ' . 'the' . 'documentation' . ' ' . 'made' . ' ' . 'it' . ' ' . 'clear.'));

If some things are bikeshed issues, this is more of a bike tarpaulin issue. :) 

I'm glad some of you get to see conversations in #wordpress-dev.  All I see are dozens of people leaving and joining the freenode servers every five minutes.

[sirzooro]

My suggestion is to add comment instead, describing that this space is important.