Prevent difference in number of placeholders in original text and translation

[johnbillion]

Ref: ​#WP37807

A translation for the following text in core was provided and approved, but the translation contained two placeholders instead of just one, which results in a PHP error.

Plugins extend and expand the functionality of WordPress. You may automatically install plugins from the <a href="%1$s">WordPress Plugin Directory</a> or upload a plugin in .zip format by clicking the button at the top of this page.

GlotPress should:

1. Detect translations that use a greater number of placeholders than the original string, and prevent the translation from being approved by anyone.
2. Detect translations that use a fewer number of placeholders than the original string, and raise a warning to alert the translators in case of an error.

[swissspidy]

AFAIK GlotPress already does that. I assume the problem in that case was a change to the original string without an update to the translation.

[SergeyBiryukov]

Yes, GlotPress already issues a warning in this case:

*Warning:* Too many tags in translation. Extra %2$s placeholder in translation.

I've found two related entries in #polyglots-warnings:

• Occitan (#oci): ​https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/polyglots-warnings/p1468076262000840
• Malay (#ms): ​https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/polyglots-warnings/p1468926450000046

Not sure why there was no warning for Spanish. Maybe because it was a fuzzy string?

[johnbillion]

In that case, this is probably a duplicate of ​https://glotpress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/539

[ocean90]

Issues with GlotPress should be reported on the ​GitHub repo.

It looks like fuzzy translations are not checked for warnings, see ​https://github.com/GlotPress/GlotPress-WP/issues/529.