[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #40143: Comment template functions don't check for comment existence

[WordPress Trac]

#40143: Comment template functions don't check for comment existence
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 Reporter:  SergeyBiryukov  |      Owner:
     Type:  defect (bug)    |     Status:  new
 Priority:  normal          |  Milestone:  4.8
Component:  Comments        |    Version:
 Severity:  normal          |   Keywords:  has-patch needs-unit-tests
  Focuses:                  |
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 Discovered during debugging an issue with Circle Lite theme, which uses
 [https://themes.trac.wordpress.org/browser/circle-
 lite/1.0.9/comments.php?marks=55#L42 comment_text( true )] in
 `kopa_comment_callback()` function.

 That, while being an invalid usage (the function treats `true` as a
 comment ID), causes an inconsistent behaviour, depending on the existence
 of the comment:
 * If the comment with ID 1 exists, the function returns its text, as
 expected. That's obviously not what the author of the theme intended, but
 still the correct behaviour of the function.
 * If the comment with ID 1 does not exist, the function returns the text
 of the current comment in the loop instead of an empty string. What
 happens is `get_comment( $comment_ID )` returns null (as expected), but
 then null is passed to `get_comment_text()`, which treats it as the
 current comment.

 After investigating more, it looks like most of comment template functions
 are either affected in a similar way or cause an undefined property notice
 when passed a non-existing comment ID. Let's bring some consistency here.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/40143>
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