Does the following work when used in comments to refer to a specific user (say, xuser):
@xuser: blah blah blah...
Or should I just use separate punctuations?:
@xuser : blah blah blah...
asked Jan 21, 2011 at 12:42
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2 Answers
Yes, that works. Since a colon is not a valid character in a username, the reply-to username in your example is considered to end on the "r".
Note that while a period is valid in usernames,
Thanks, @xuser. That was helpful.
will also work, because a trailing period is removed from the mention (to accomodate this precise scenario). And since July 2014, multiple trailing dots are removed too.
answered Jan 21, 2011 at 12:47
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1@marcog, see The
dotin username within first 3 character preventing from comment replies?– ArjanJan 21, 2011 at 14:40 -
@marcog: We try to handle those edge cases as intuitively as possible. "@R.." will match a user called "R. Smith", if that's what you mean. It will also match a user called "R." (which isn't a legal new username anymore), and also matches "R..". Jan 21, 2011 at 14:42
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@Arjan: Note that I've rewritten a lot of the comment matching code, so take previous statements on edge case handling with a pinch of salt (in this case it's true, though). Jan 21, 2011 at 14:47
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The 11 points (which are in fact many more points) make a nice set for a unit test...? :-)– ArjanJan 21, 2011 at 14:49
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@Arjan: Re unit tests -- there's a bunch of them in this case :) And re R. Smith: As I said, the trailing period is removed, so we're looking for "R.", which is the first name of "R. Smith", so the two-character-first-name-matching holds. By the way: I tested the algorithm on a (few months old) copy of the Meta database; except for 8 users (who have no latin letters in their usernames), a reply with
"@" + username.Replace(" ", "")always matched; with and without an additional period. Jan 21, 2011 at 15:01 -
1Lesson learned: You really shouldn't try to reply to "R. Smith" with "@R.". Use "@R.Smith". Jan 21, 2011 at 15:05
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Note that a single quote is valid in a display name too. Hence,
in @name's commentfails to notify name. (But using@O'Reillywould work of course.)– ArjanFeb 3, 2011 at 10:54 -
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@Arjan: I'm afraid you'll have to edit again :) After the next build, these genitive constructs will be handled as well. Feb 3, 2011 at 12:39
You don't need to seperate any puntuation that follows the user's name.
See the FAQ question How do comment @replies work?, specifically point 12 of the answer.
