Bug: Author name handling not working

[cat]

Description of your request or bug report: I think this used to be something that worked and now no longer does. Currently the search for an author with no spaces in their name (ex: 太宰治) returns a different set than with spaces (ex: 太宰 治). I could have sworn this used to be handled to return the full set for either name variation.

Trello link:

[brandon]

Hmm… I thought so too! We handle reverse authors… but the code doesn’t look like it handles removing spaces? I swear there was that handling at one point too. Strange. Anyways, approved.

[enbyboiwonder]

Related:

@enbyboiwonder

Sometimes authors’ names will be displayed as both “A B” and “AB,” and they’re functionally the same in search. If you search an author or click the name, it’ll bring up all works credited to that author regardless of whether it’s got a space or not or whether the search had one or not. That’s great.

But they’re not functionally the same in series. There are series on here that are listed as being by “Various authors” despite those “various authors” just being “A B” and “AB,” a.ka. the same person, which is annoying, not to mention misleading. So it would be nice if they could be treated the same on series pages too, maybe just display it the way it’s formatted on the first volume. Or else authors could have a standardized name format for series pages, so even if it’s inconsistent within a series, the site still recognizes that they’re all by the same author instead of thinking they were written by different people.

(At least, I thought space vs. no space did work, I’m p sure it’s brought both up before, but I guess it’s inconsistent. I also notice one of the BSD novels with Dazai’s name in the title is brought up in the with-space search despite there being none, but the no-space search brings up two. Odd.)