[Pywikipedia-l] [ pywikipediabot-Bugs-2619054 ] clarify between limit, number, batch and step parameters

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Bugs item #2619054, was opened at 2009-02-20 03:04
Message generated for change (Comment added) made by russblau
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Category: rewrite
Group: None
Status: Open
Resolution: None
Priority: 5
Private: No
Submitted By: NicDumZ — Nicolas Dumazet (nicdumz)
Assigned to: Russell Blau (russblau)
Summary: clarify between limit, number, batch and step parameters

Initial Comment:
I had a strange behavior of replace.py -weblink: that I couldn't quite diagnose: some pages were not treated.

First of all, those detailed logs are a great gift. They are a bit messy to understand at first, but thanks to those I found the bug and fixed it in r6386 ( http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/pywikipedia?view=rev&revision=6386 ).

I believe that this parameter confusion is a very bad habit we have from the old framework. (the only reason there we have those bugs is because we merged pagegenerators from trunk.) We need to agree on common parameters for generators that have a global meaning, and stick to it.

I personally think that -limit might be a bit confusing (is it an api limit, a limit enforced by the local application on a huge fetched set, etc ?), while -number appears a bit more clear. But it's a personal opinion =)
What about -number for "number of items to retrieve", and -step, or -maxstep for the maximum number of items to retrieve at once ? 
Actually, I don't mind about the names; we just need to agree on something meaningful enough, and document them in the file headings.

On a sidenote, replace.py -fix:yu-tld -weblink:*.yu is actually running on fr.wp. No issues sighted. =)

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>Comment By: Russell Blau (russblau)
Date: 2009-02-20 10:00

Message:
A good point.  A query can have two different types of limits: the limit on
the number of pages/links/whatever retrieved from the API in a single
request (defaults to "max"), and the limit on the total number of items to
be retrieved from a repeated query.  We should do this in a way that is (a)
internally consistent among all generators, and (b) as much as possible,
backwards-compatible with the old pagegenerators module (but this is
secondary to getting something that works).

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