Mysterious output quirks - vanishing plus signs and spaces

[Venatius]

Hello! I've hit the darnedest quirks in my recent macro coding that I was hoping perhaps someone could account for. Both are called as UDFs.

Case 1: The disappearing space.
Consider this function, whose purpose is to hide output if the variable "private" in the calling macro is set to 1.

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[r, if(private == 0), code: {
	[r: " "+input]
};{
	[s,g,r: " "+input]
}]

It's defined onCampaignLoad with [h: defineFunction("privateOutput", "PrivateOutput@this", 0, 0)]
A space is included so that it can be formatted not to leave a gap if information is hidden. For instance, if you want "Rolling." vs "Rolling 12." to appear, the idea is you would input:
Rolling[r: privateOutput(12)].
and if private == 1, it should output "Rolling." to everyone but the GM(s) and the invoking user, who see "Rolling 12."
Here's the weird part, though:

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[h: private = 0]Rolling[r: privateOutput(12)]

returns: "Rolling12." However, if private is set to equal 1, the space renders correctly, displaying "Rolling 12." for the user and just "Rolling." for everyone else. Is there any reason why R: would eat the space while S,G,R does not?

Case 2: The disappearing plus sign.
I run into a lot of cases where the rules of a game, by convention, prepend things with a plus sign if it's positive. I wanted to make a UDF to automate this. Thus, getSign:

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[h, if(arg(0) >= 0): result = "+ "+arg(0); result = "- "+abs(arg(0))]
[h: macro.return = result]

It's defined onCampaignLoad with [h: defineFunction("getSign", "GetSign@this")]. Here's the problem. This is a workaround. The original code was this:

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[h, if(arg(0) >= 0): result = "+"+arg(0); result = arg(0)]
[h: macro.return = result]

So in theory, if it's 0 or greater, it should return the first argument with a + prefixed to it. The problem is, no matter how I struggle with it, it doesn't. The number simply returns as-is. getSign(5) returns 5, not +5. I found it didn't "eat" it if I included a space (and thus set it up to include one for negatives just for visual consistency). Is there any workaround for this that doesn't mandate the extra space?

[aliasmask]

I'm not sure about the space problem, but the + disappears once you assign the result to a value because it's converted. If you want to display a + you either do it during the output or use an html entity. I recommend using strformat method for your output.

For example:

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[H: value = 5]
[R: strformat("%+d",value)]

[aliasmask]

As for the space, if there is nothing before it it may get lost with html formatting, which is what chat is. If you want to force a space I recommend and html entity  

[Venatius]

As for the space, if there is nothing before it it may get lost with html formatting, which is what chat is. If you want to force a space I recommend and html entity  

Thanks very much! This has the privateOutput() function working just fine. I'm perhaps a little unclear as to how to best utilize your advice on the other one. Here's a quick, improvised use case example:

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[h: modifiers = '{"Flanking":2,"Pants around ankles":-4}']
Your modifiers are:
[r, forEach(current, modifiers), code: {
	[r: current] [r: getSign(json.get(modifiers, current))].
}]

(It's inexact, but it hopefully provides context.) In this case, the ideal output would be "Your modifiers are: Flanking +2, Pants around ankles -4." My hope with creating getSign() was to have a succinct and easy way to just slap down the appropriate + or -. But so far I can't seem to find any way to retrieve it from the function with the leading + intact. I did try modifying the code in a rough attempt to comply with the suggestion:

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[h, if(arg(0) >= 0): result = strformat("%+d",arg(0)); result = arg(0)]
[h: macro.return = result]

But that didn't quite do it, possibly because I misunderstood the intended usage. It could always be done manually without making a UDF. I was just aiming for convenience. I guess it's not really much harder to do [r, if(number >= 0): "+"][r: number] than just [r: getSign(number)].

[aliasmask]

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[h: modifiers = '{"Flanking":2,"Pants around ankles":-4}']
[H: output = "Your modifiers are: "]
[H: modList = ""]
[H, forEach(current, modifiers), code: {
   [H: modList = listAppend(modList,strformat("%s %+d",current,json.get(modifiers,current)),", ")]
}]
[R: output = output + modList]

Your modifiers are: Flanking +2, Pants around ankles -4

[Venatius]

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[h: modifiers = '{"Flanking":2,"Pants around ankles":-4}']
[H: output = "Your modifiers are: "]
[H: modList = ""]
[H, forEach(current, modifiers), code: {
   [H: modList = listAppend(modList,strformat("%s %+d",current,json.get(modifiers,current)),", ")]
}]
[R: output = output + modList]

Your modifiers are: Flanking +2, Pants around ankles -4

Gotcha. Looks like I'll need to do it in some manner like this without the UDF then. Thanks very much for your assistance!

[aliasmask]

As a rule of thumb, I always put my output in to a variable before outputting it. There are several benefits to this like readability, memory storage, data manipulation, portability of output...

[Venatius]

That makes sense. I might be on still too amateur a tier to make much productive use of that, but I can see the logic in it.