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Comment by chipgap98 | Hacker News Reader

There is a list[1] of things you can't start tweets with

[1] - https://support.twitter.com/articles/14020

The fact that "D Name" starts a direct message doesn't explain why "D. Something" gives an error, except for shoddy coding.

It's probably so that people don't accidentally publish something they intended to DM by tapping the spacebar twice after the command. It'd still imagine it should be allowed from a full keyboard, at least.

That's an interesting idea but very speculative.

Nice idea, but 'internal server error' (per the linked tweet, didn't try it) isn't exactly a good reaction. IF someone thought that this might make sense, the result should not/would not be a 500..

It could be that an internal service is returning an error, which the externally facing server is not handling properly.

Allowing multiple spaces makes sense, I suppose, but why support a dot stuck there? Seems like an oversight.

On many mobile keyboards double space turns into '. ' as a quick way to begin a new sentence.

yes, absolutely! It has to be this. Plus, a tiny little period is really hard to miss on mobile (where the shortcut you mention applies). it's almost justified.

"d. something" is not the only offender. I suspect it's a badly written parser. "m. anything" also breaks. And for fun, without the following word ("something"), the tweet just vanishes with no error at all.

I tried all of the non-space non-alphanumeric characters on my keyboard. Some worked, most caused an error.

d` d~ d$ d% d^ d& d( d) d- d+ d[ d] d{ d} d| d; d' d" d, d< d. d> d/ d?

I typed 'WTF' and it got posted as a tweet, even though it's on that list:

> SUGGEST, SUG, S, or WTF - this command returns a list of Twitter users we think you might find interesting and would like to follow.

Curious - via the web, an app, or SMS?

I got the impression those were SMS commands only, but it would be interesting to learn they'd shut down some of the functions but not all.

Via the web - the same input box that would error out on "D. <any-word>"

Ah, I see. "Who To Follow". Mental acronym disconnect there for a moment. :)

Nah, the other meaning of the acronym usually fits as well

It's not clear why the SMS codes would be restricted on the web, but good to know.

Because they are still used on the web as well. I still use "D {handle} {message}" to DM people.

Seems like a mistake waiting to happen.

Yep, it has already happened!

A few years back you could tweet FOLLOW USERNAME and that username would follow you

Yes, but only in Soviet Russia.

For @chucknorris this feature has always existed.

Anyone remember Anthony Weiner? His infamous tweet (that ended up with him resigning from Congress) was intended to be a direct message but he started it with @, not D, so it went (briefly) to his public timeline [1].

And it seems that, when you're a congressman, posting a dick pic even briefly is enough to attract some attention.

[1] http://www.nationaljournal.com/how-weiner-fell-into-the-twit...

It's so ironic, the whole thing could have been avoided if he'd given her the D... (sorry)

You're not sorry.

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