406957 - Typing "/ms" incorrectly triggers as "/msg"

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Other Applications Graveyard :: ChatZilla, defect)

Description

[Garrett W.]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20071127 Firefox/2.0.0.11
Build Identifier: ChatZilla 0.9.79 [Firefox 2.0.0.11/2007112718]

The GlobalGamers network has a service called MemoServ for which they offer a shortcut command: instead of saying "/msg MemoServ ...", one can type "/memoserv ...", or even "/ms ..." .
This latter shortcut, /ms, does not work correctly in ChatZilla. It assumes that /msg was intended. Thus, I cannot use this prefix as I should be able to.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Connect to an IRC network that offers MemoServ and supports "/ms", such as irc.gg-center.net (where I tried it)
2. Try it out. A good test would be: /ms help
3. Notice the error message, which indicates the additional parameter it was expecting. This led me to try sending a /msg to someone by spelling it "/ms", and it worked.
Actual Results:  
"[ERROR] Missing required parameter message."

Expected Results:  
A message from MemoServ containing help text.

Comment 1

[:Gijs (he/him)]

The reason for this is that given command string X, we check the following:

- if X matches more than one command, alert the user saying the command is ambiguous
- if X matches exactly one command, execute that command and presume the user was shortcutting the command in question
- if X matches no commands, check the pref for guessing commands. If this pref is true, it will send your command to the server as-is. If it isn't, it will instead error out saying it doesn't know what you mean.


So what happens here is expected. I can see why the behaviour is annoying in this case, but usually it isn't. I can't think of a reasonable way to stop this from happening either - the /ms alias certainly does not work everywhere, so adding it as a command seems a bit odd to me. Though I suppose we could add /ns, /ms and /cs as aliases to "/msg nickserv" and such, and that would work in most cases (and if it doesn't, no harm done...)

Finally, you can work around this by doing the latter bit yourself: "/alias ms msg memoserv" in the input box will make ChatZilla behave as you expect.

Comment 2

[Garrett W.]

no, i don't think you should have to add aliases in the code. i can use /ns and /cs just fine without having them hardcoded into the program.

You said:
>> - if X matches exactly one command, execute that command and presume the user
was shortcutting the command in question

i wonder if it is really necessary to "presume shortcutting" at all. it seems like it would be a good bit of unnecessary code, as opposed to only checking for exact matches. i'm sure people who use mIRC get along fine without it.

Comment 3

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Well, I'm not sure about anyone else, but I actually use this a lot, and definitively consider it a feature rather than a bug. The code has been there for ages, so I don't really fancy removing it at all. Adding the one alias for "ms" is a one line change. James, what do you think?

Comment 4

[James Ross]

The ability to only type enough of a command to make it unique is an important feature that not only do we call out in the FAQ but which I know people use.

There a couple of things we can do, my favourite of which is to have /ns, /cs, /ms and any others aliased to /quote ns, /quote cs, /quote ms, etc..

Comment 5

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Right. To prevent people from making a mess about them though, I'd suggest not adding a CMD_CONSOLE flag. That sound good?

Comment 6

[James Ross]

Yeah. If someone can find a list of all the short commands that servers tend to use, that'd be useful.

Comment 7

[Garrett W.]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Well, I'm not sure about anyone else, but I actually use this a lot, and
> definitively consider it a feature rather than a bug. The code has been there
> for ages, so I don't really fancy removing it at all. Adding the one alias for
> "ms" is a one line change. James, what do you think?

Oh ok then, i didn't realize it was used that much. What are some things you use it for?

Comment 8

[James Ross]

I almost always shorten /attach and /query to /at and /que, and I would use /disc and /rec (for /disconnect and /reconnect) if we got a bug fixed. There aren't many other commands I use, so for me it's quite a high percentage that (want to) get shortened. Everyone's different, of course. :)

Comment 9

[Garrett W.]

oh haha i don't use any of those commands. :)

Comment 10

[G Bayliss]

This is common in IRC apps (ircII for example) - not a "bug", this is by design

Comment 11

[:Gijs (he/him)]

So, anope seems to use the following:

/bs (botserv)
/cs (chanserv)
/hs (hostserv)
/ms (memoserv)
/ns (nickserv)
/os (operserv)


I would propose to only alias cs, ms and ns, as I don't think the others are used enough (or confusable with any existing commands) to warrant doing this. James: does that make sense?

Comment 12

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Attachment: Patch (cs, ms, ns)

Like this :-)

Comment 13

[:Gijs (he/him)]

Checking in mozilla/extensions/irc/xul/content/commands.js;
/cvsroot/mozilla/extensions/irc/xul/content/commands.js,v  <--  commands.js
new revision: 1.146; previous revision: 1.145
done