Template:Str ≥ len/doc

This is the {{str ≥ len}} meta-template.

It helps other templates check if a string is "longer or equally long" vs. "shorter" than a given length.

Usage

This template takes 3 to 4 unnamed parameters.

Here is how to check if the string "abcde" is 4 characters or more:

{{str ≥ len | abcde | 4
| Equal or longer.
| Shorter.
}}

Which returns this:

Equal or longer.

Templates have a problem handling parameter data that contains equal signs "=". But that is easily solved by using numbered parameters. Here we check if the string "ab=cde" is 100 characters or more:

{{str ≥ len 
| 1 = ab=cde 
| 2 = 100
| 3 = Equal "=" or longer.
| 4 = Shorter, not "=".
}}

Which returns this:

Shorter, not "=".

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

{{str ≥ len 
| 1 = A string
| 2 = A length
| 3 = Data to return/render when "longer than or equally long".
| 4 = Data to return/render when "shorter than".
}}

Empty or undefined strings are considered to be of 0 length.

Length values below 0 are considered to be 0.

Technical details

The potential alternative templates names {{str >= len}} or (for the opposite) {{str < len}} do not work 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.