Editing Module:Buffer/doc (section)

====Basic usage====
{{code|lang=lua|Buffer:functionName( ... )}}

You may directly chain any function from the following libraries on Buffer objects:

* {{luaref|String library|string|y}}
* {{luaref|Text library|mw.text|y}}
* {{luaref|Ustring library|mw.ustring|y}}

Functions from these libraries added to the Module:Buffer metatable on-demand and placed within a wrapper method that strings the Buffer object for the first argument and then forwards the remaining arguments.

Thus, the following are equivalent: {{code|lang=lua|Buffer:nowiki( ... )}} and {{luaref|mw.text.nowiki|args=tostring(Buffer), ...}}

If a name exists in both the string and mw.ustring libraries, the string version takes precedence. You may [[prefix]] the letter ''u'' on any mw.ustring function{{--}}e.g. Buffer:ulen returns the number of unicode characters and Buffer:len returns the number of bytes.

Buffer:gsub and Buffer:ugsub have a slightly different wrapper which substitutes the <code>repl</code> argument of {{luaref|string.gsub||y}} and {{luaref|mw.ustring.gsub||y}} when it evaluates false or is omitted with an empty string (otherwise the originals would throw an error). This saves a few keystrokes when removing characters via {{code|lang=lua|Buffer:gsub'[pattern]'}} as opposed to {{code|lang=lua|Buffer:gsub( '[pattern]', '' )}}. All other arguments are handled the same as with the other on-demand methods.

Library functions which take a non-string as the first argument are not supported.