Bug overview description.
Comment replies don't appear because of the symbol " ~ " (tilde) in my username.
What part(s) of the site page(s) are affected?
It effects the "Search for myself in comments" page.
What is the expected behavior?
Expected it to show any comment replies i've received.
What actual behavior is given instead?
Site will not show any of the comment replies that people make.
Time of incident (if applicable).
Not Applicable
Can you reproduce the bug every time?
Yes
What steps did you take to replicate this bug?
This happens every single time I try to load my comment replies
Errors or other messages returned (if any).
None

Extra: Removing the tilde from the URL shows the comment replies normally, the site should automatically load the webpage without the tilde included, but because it does... no replies load
Edit: I just realized that this bug effects all URL's that have a tilde in it and removing the tilde yields expected results.

Example URL's:
-https://e621.net/comment/search?query=~M0noponi3 (Bugged, doesn't work as its supposed to)(default)
-https://e621.net/comment/search?query=M0noponi3 (Removed tilde)(Works correctly, but doesn't load by default and URL has to be modified to get)

~M0noponi3 said:
Comment replies don't appear because of the symbol " ~ " (tilde) in my username.
It effects the "Search for myself in comments" page.
Expected it to show any comment replies i've received.
Site will not show any of the comment replies that people make.
Time of incident (not applicable).
This happens every single time I try to load my comment replies
Opening my comment replies directly leads to the issue
No error messages.

Extra: Removing the tilde from the URL shows the comment replies normally, the site should automatically load the webpage without the tilde included but because it does no replies load

Example URL's:
-https://e621.net/comment/search?query=~M0noponi3 (Bugged, doesn't work as its supposed to)(default)
-https://e621.net/comment/search?query=M0noponi3 (Removed tilde)(Works correctly, but doesn't load by default and URL has to be modified to get)

Maybe just request a name change and remove the tilde?

Furrin_Gok said:
Maybe just request a name change and remove the tilde?

I could but I just did that less than 24 hours ago, I want to keep my username as-is

It doesn't work properly because the tilde is reserved for fuzzy searches. As long as your username starts with a tilde, it is not going to work properly in other parts of the site as well. I doubt they're going to change the site's programming just so you can have a tilde in your name.

https://e621.net/comment/search?query=\\~M0noponi3 is the correct query, and works correctly AFAICS.

No bug is present IMO

EDIT: Ugh, can't post the link as a proper link..
The intended link simply inserts an \ before the ~. Entering \\~M0noponi3 in the query field is equivalent.

savageorange said:
https://e621.net/comment/search?query=\\~M0noponi3 is the correct query, and works correctly AFAICS.

No bug is present IMO

EDIT: Ugh, can't post the link correctly..
The intended link simply inserts an \ before the ~.

You wanna type it as

"https://e621.net/comment/search?query=\\\\~M0noponi3":/comment/search?query=\\~M0noponi3

Nets you https://e621.net/comment/search?query=\\~M0noponi3

I see. Since URL encoding is much more restricted than Unicode, and has it's own form of escaping (%), I guess it makes sense that \ escapes are not interpreted.

Probably the most correct way of writing that url is
https://e621.net/comment/search?query=%5C~M0noponi3

(produced by python urllib.parse.quote, which illustrates that \ is not a valid literal in URL encoding and must be %-escaped)

I think this is a good demonstration of why users shouldn't be allowed to have punctuation at the start of their name.

Who knows what would happen if they put an asterisk in their name.

^ asterisks appear to not be escapeable -- that is, you cannot search for a literal * -- foo\\* is equivalent to foo\\\* is equivalent to foo*.
I would regard that as a bug, since it is text search, not restricted to usernames.

BlueDingo said:
I think this is a good demonstration of why users shouldn't be allowed to have punctuation at the start of their name.

Who knows what would happen if they put an asterisk in their name.

The only symbols they allow us to use are -_~'
I feel it should be fixed that they should at least patch the code to support the characters that they allow

^ After more testing, I agree there is a bug present -- since ~ is actually not being interpreted as alternation operator here. You can verify it by searching 'foo', then 'bar', then '~foo ~bar'.

EDIT:
More test results :

• foo -bar is treated the same as foo bar. \-escaping the - has no effect. BUG
• foo_ is treated the same as foo. BUG

I hypothesize that all punctuation characters (unicode categories P*) are being automatically stripped.

savageorange said:
^ asterisks appear to not be escapeable -- that is, you cannot search for a literal * -- foo\\* is equivalent to foo\\\* is equivalent to foo*.
I would regard that as a bug, since it is text search, not restricted to usernames.

Asterisks are %2A.

Furrin_Gok said:
Asterisks are %2A.

I think you've misunderstood my statement. I'm talking about e621's comment search processor, not url encoding.

You'll find that entering %2A in the query box is the same as entering 2A (which supports the punctuation-stripping theory). Editing the url to say 'query=%2A' returns no results, which seems strictly impossible if it were being interpreted as a literal *, and also impossible if interpreted as a wildcard I think (should be equivalent to an empty query string). Unless there is a minimum search term length restriction?

EDIT:
Actually, the punctuation-stripping theory would make it a search for an empty string -- as distinct from an actually null query. Which it's anyone's guess what that would match.

My advice is to put this link and other links on your profile for now. Look at my profile and you will see tons of links that I store there. I find it easier to use than bookmarks.

It works without the tilde because the comment query search is looking for the string everywhere. If your username was "potato", you'd get a lot of other comments.

This search works fine with tilde:

https://e621.net/comment/search?query=&user=%7EM0noponi3&date_start=&date_end=&post_id=&status=any&order=date

Since there appear to be no operators for comment searches, this bug should be able to be fixed.

Lance_Armstrong said:
My advice is to put this link and other links on your profile for now. Look at my profile and you will see tons of links that I store there. I find it easier to use than bookmarks.

It works without the tilde because the comment query search is looking for the string everywhere. If your username was "potato", you'd get a lot of other comments.

This search works fine with tilde:

https://e621.net/comment/search?query=&user=%7EM0noponi3&date_start=&date_end=&post_id=&status=any&order=date

Since there appear to be no operators for comment searches, this bug should be able to be fixed.

Would you happen to know when this bug will be fixed?

~M0noponi3 said:
Would you happen to know when this bug will be fixed?

I won't know until an admin takes a look at it.

Lance_Armstrong said:
I won't know until an admin takes a look at it.

Ok, thanks :)