Editing Help:Link (section)

=== Automatic conversion of wikitext with the pipe trick ===
{{See also|Help:Pipe trick}}

If in a piped link the part after the "|" is left empty, it is [[Help:Automatic conversion of wikitext|converted]] to an abbreviated form of the linked page, as follows:

# Any word before the first colon (:), as well as the colon itself, is removed. This word may or may not be a namespace prefix (such as "Help:") or an interwiki prefix (such as "commons:"). If the page name is preceded by a colon, "first" refers to "first after this".
# If there is text in parentheses at the end it will be removed.
# If there are no parentheses but there is a comma, the comma and everything after it are removed.
# The link will be in whatever case is used.

Just like for the three or four tildes when signing on Talk pages and the use of <code>subst</code>, in a preview, the result already shows up in the preview itself, but the conversion in the edit box is not yet shown. Press "Show changes" to see the change in the wikitext.

;Category tag
:The sort key syntax of the category being like a piped link, the pipe trick also works for category tags, even though it is not useful there.
;Examples using colons
: <code><nowiki>[[Help:Template|]]</nowiki></code> is converted to <nowiki>[[Help:Template|Template]]</nowiki>, which is rendered as [[Help:Template|Template]].
: <code><nowiki>[[Music: My life|]]</nowiki></code> is converted to <nowiki>[[Music: My life| My life]]</nowiki>, which is rendered as [[Music: My life| My life]] – although "Music:" is not a namespace (therefore the space after the colon is not automatically removed), the shortcut works anyway.
: <code><nowiki>[[w:en:Pipe (computing)|]]</nowiki></code> is converted to <nowiki>[[w:en:Pipe (computing)|en:Pipe]]</nowiki>, which is rendered as [[w:en:Pipe (computing)|en:Pipe]].
;Case examples
: <code><nowiki>[[pipe (computing)|]]</nowiki></code> is converted to <nowiki>[[pipe (computing)|pipe]]</nowiki> which is rendered as [[pipe (computing)|pipe]].
: <code><nowiki>[[Pipe (computing)|]]</nowiki></code> is converted to <nowiki>[[Pipe (computing)|Pipe]]</nowiki> which is rendered as [[Pipe (computing)|Pipe]].
;Comma example
: <code><nowiki>[[commons:Boston, Massachusetts|]]</nowiki></code> is converted to <nowiki>[[commons:Boston, Massachusetts|Boston]]</nowiki>, which is rendered as [[commons:Boston, Massachusetts|Boston]].
;Other examples
:[[Help:Templates#Parameters|Parameters]] and [[Help:magic words#Variables|variables]]:
:<code><nowiki>[[w:{{{1}}}|]]</nowiki></code> does ''not'' give <nowiki>[[w:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]]</nowiki>.
: Calling the template with a value of parameter 1 gives a working link in the case of substitution only.
:<code><nowiki>[[w:en:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|]]</nowiki></code> does ''not'' give <nowiki>[[w:en:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|en:{{FULLPAGENAME}}]]</nowiki>.
: <code><nowiki>[[m:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|]]</nowiki></code> does ''not'' give <nowiki>[[m:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|{{FULLPAGENAME}}]]</nowiki>

<syntaxhighlight lang="wikitext">
* [[project:a (b)|]]
* [[w:project:a (b)|]]
* [[:de:project:a (b)|]]
* [[wiktionary:project:a (b)|]]
* [[wiktionary:de:project:a (b)|]]
* [[wikibooks:project:a (b)|]]
* [[wikiquote:project:a (b)|]]
* [[wikisource:project:a (b)|]]
* [[w:en:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|]]
** [[w:en:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|en:{{FULLPAGENAME}}]]
* [[m:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|]]
** [[m:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|{{FULLPAGENAME}}]]
</syntaxhighlight>

These examples appear as:

* [[project:a (b)|a]]
* [[w:project:a (b)|project:a]]
* [[:de:project:a (b)|project:a]]
* [[wiktionary:project:a (b)|project:a]]
* [[wiktionary:de:project:a (b)|de:project:a]]
* [[wikibooks:project:a (b)|project:a]]
* [[wikiquote:project:a (b)|project:a]]
* [[wikisource:project:a (b)|project:a]]
* [[w:en:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|]]
** [[w:en:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|en:{{FULLPAGENAME}}]]
* [[m:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|]]
** [[m:{{FULLPAGENAME}}|{{FULLPAGENAME}}]]