Literal Placeholder Inventory
Inventory nonnested literal placeholders, preserving repeated names and source spans; does not parse a programming template language.
Description
Inventory nonnested literal placeholders, preserving repeated names and source spans; does not parse a programming template language.
A placeholder inventory records names and spans before a template is rendered. Repeated names remain useful evidence of repeated substitution sites.
When to use this tool
Inventory nonnested literal placeholders, preserving repeated names and source spans; does not parse a programming template language.
- Prepare the supplied text, openMarker, closeMarker fields for this operation.
- Compare the complete example with the representation used by your own input before carrying the result into another step.
How to use the tool and how it works
- Enter text, openMarker, closeMarker. Use the exact text syntax, units and index conventions explained below.
- Run the tool. If input validation fails, correct the supplied fields before interpreting any result.
- Read result.names, result.spans, result.uniqueNames. Interpret false, null and empty lists using the distinctions below; they can be valid outputs.
Require nonempty literal markers. Scan left to right for an opener and its next closer, return every interior name and full half-open placeholder span, and collect unique names in first-seen order.1
| Input field | Meaning and representation | Accepted input |
|---|---|---|
| text | text. | Text; at most 8,192 UTF-16 code units, subject to the grammar above |
| openMarker | open marker. | Text; at most 8,192 UTF-16 code units, subject to the grammar above |
| closeMarker | close marker. | Text; at most 8,192 UTF-16 code units, subject to the grammar above |
| Output field | Interpretation |
|---|---|
| result | Object containing the named outputs below. |
| result.names | The names list in the ordering and representation described above. |
| result.spans | The spans list in the ordering and representation described above. |
| result.uniqueNames | The unique names list in the ordering and representation described above. |
{
"input": {
"text": "{x}{x}{y}",
"openMarker": "{",
"closeMarker": "}"
},
"output": {
"result": {
"names": [
"x",
"x",
"y"
],
"spans": [
[
0,
3
],
[
3,
6
],
[
6,
9
]
],
"uniqueNames": [
"x",
"y"
]
}
}
}Limitations and assumptions
- An unclosed opener ends the scan. Markers are literal, nesting and escaping are not interpreted, and an empty interior name is retained rather than validated as an identifier.
- Text offsets and lengths use UTF-16 code units unless explicitly described as bytes or code points. CRLF, CR and LF are recognized as line endings; a terminal newline creates a final empty line in the shared line model.
- Every declared top-level field is required and unexpected fields are rejected. Numeric inputs must be finite; ordinary text fields are bounded to 8,192 UTF-16 code units, with tighter operation-specific limits where stated.
- Ordinary string lists have at most 128 entries of at most 128 code units each; numeric lists and matrices have separate bounded size checks. Nonfinite results and excessively large serialized outputs are rejected.
- Indexes are zero-based and spans have an exclusive end unless explicitly stated otherwise. A valid false, null or empty-list result is distinct from malformed input.
Alternative or Complementary methods
Use a parser or language-aware editor when quoting, syntax or nested constructs matter. For plain text transforms, keep UTF-16 offsets, Unicode code points, grapheme clusters and UTF-8 byte offsets distinct; apply changes to the same source version used to calculate spans.
References
Similar or alternative tools
- Enclosing Literal Wrapper Stripper
Strip one complete nonoverlapping enclosing literal wrapper, never internal or partial matches.
- Leftmost Longest Literal Match Selector
Select nonoverlapping leftmost-longest literal alternatives; equal lengths retain input alternative order.