Incorrect array handling behaviour when using split when converting it to a string

[bvanelli]

Hi,

I was trying the example jg-rp/liquid#194 and though the issue was my code not correctly rendering. Turns out the playground was deceiving me into thinking I had the correct behaviour.

It seems like the template library is consistent on the Python and library for the query:

{{ "foo,bar,baz" | split: "," }}

While this library requires:

{{ "foo,bar,baz" | split: "," | json }}

to return the correct result (from the Ruby library).

I have tried looking into the issues and also https://liquidjs.com/tutorials/differences.html, but could not find anything related.

Is this an actual issue, or is it meant to be like that?

And if I want to have consistent behaviour, can I ensure maximum compatibility to the spec somehow?

[jg-rp]

I think this comes down to Shopify/liquid's two distinct array/object stringifying methods/functions vs LiquidJS's one.

Shopify has render_obj_to_output, which is similar to stringify in this project - concatenated array items without square brackets and separating commas. This is used when rendering an array or object directly.

https://github.com/Shopify/liquid/blob/d897899f6654c476e58e884bc8e24924600e5801/lib/liquid/variable.rb#L113

Then there's array_inspect and hash_inspect , which are closer to a JSON-formatted dump. This is used by filters that coerce their inputs to strings.

https://github.com/Shopify/liquid/blob/d897899f6654c476e58e884bc8e24924600e5801/lib/liquid/utils.rb#L134

Given this template:

{{ "1,2,3,4" | split: "," }}
{{ "1,2,3,4" | split: "," | strip }}

Expected output:

1234
["1", "2", "3", "4"]

LiquidJS output:

1234
1234

If you're going for maximum compatibility with Shopify/liquid, I'd call this a bug. If you're going for language consistency, I'd leave it as is and direct people to json and first filters (or maybe an intermediate variable so one can index into the array).

[bvanelli]

I guess, either way the the:

• Behaviour has to be done the same or
• An additional note has to be added to https://liquidjs.com/tutorials/differences.html stating the different stringification of objects.