Piping

In an action list, ;| separates two commands like ; does, and pipes the first into the second: what the first command shows you is passed to the second instead, which reads it as %|. Spaces may come between the ; and the |.

To try a list at the prompt, run it with @force/noeval me={...}. Without /noeval, @force evaluates the list once before running it, while %| is still empty.

> @force/noeval me={think [ansi(hr,Hello)] there ;| @pemit me=Got [words(%|)] words: %|}
Got 2 words: Hello there

%| holds every line the piped command showed you, joined with %r, colors and other markup kept. stripansi() removes the markup; there is no terminal code to translate.

> @force/noeval me={@dolist/inline red green=think ##;| think Colors: [edit(%|,%r,%b-%b)]}
Colors: red - green

Only what is shown to the object running the list is piped. Messages to anyone else are delivered as usual.
Only the command right after ;| reads it. Every other command reads an empty %|. Pipes chain: in a ;| b ;| c, b reads what a showed and c what b showed.
Work the piped command queues (@wait, a queued @switch) runs later and is shown as usual. A list queued by the command after ;| gets a copy of %|, the way it gets a copy of the q-registers.
The text is cut at the last whole line that fits the output limit.

%| is what a command showed. %> is what it returned: see command output.

PennMUSH has neither: it reads %| as a plain |, and runs ;| as ; followed by a command starting with |, which is no command there either.

::: seealso