How to remove the "on" string before recent comments link?

Question

I have figured out how to remove the author name before the recent comments, but not sure where to find the code that is adding the " on " before the recent comments.

This is the bit of code I found to remove the author:

if ( empty( $url ) || 'http://' == $url )
        $return = $author;
    else
        // $return = "<a href='$url' rel='external nofollow' class='url'>$author</a>";

If anyone could point out where I could find the code to remove the " on " before the link I would really appreciate it, I've searched the webs for a while but to no avail.

Answer 1

The source of the text in question lives in wp-includes/widgets/class-wp-widget-recent-comments.php

I found it by searching the WP files for the id of the widget, recentcomments, which I gathered by inspecting the HTML of the widget. So, here's where that on is coming from, with a bit of extra code for context:

foreach ( (array) $comments as $comment ) {
    $output .= '<li class="recentcomments">';
    /* translators: comments widget: 1: comment author, 2: post link */
    $output .= sprintf( _x( '%1$s on %2$s', 'widgets' ),
        '<span class="comment-author-link">' . get_comment_author_link( $comment ) . '</span>',
        '<a href="' . esc_url( get_comment_link( $comment ) ) . '">' . get_the_title( $comment->comment_post_ID ) . '</a>'
    );
    $output .= '</li>';
}

Here we can see that $output .= sprintf( _x( '%1$s on %2$s', 'widgets' ), is the string we need to change. We can use the gettext_with_context filter to take out the author and the word on in one pass.

/**
* @param string $translated
* @param string $text
* @param string $context
* @param string $domain
* @return string
*/
function wpse238430_recent_comments_text( $translated, $text, $context, $domain ) {

    // Use guard clauses to bail as soon as possible if we're not looking
    // at the things we want. Bailing early is a good practice because 
    // translation filters are called frequently, so code in this function could be run many times, causing an impact on performance.

    // Our string identified above used the 'widgets' context, so make sure that's what we're looking at.
    if ( $context !== 'widgets' ) {
        return $translated;
    }

    // WordPress uses the 'default' text domain, even though one is not explicitly specified. Bail if the text domain is not 'default';
    if ( 'default' !== $domain ) {
        return $translated;
    }   

    // $text contains the string to be evaluated for translation.
    switch ( $text ) {


        case '%1$s on %2$s' : // If $text == '%1$s on %2$s', do something..
            //$translated = '%1$s on %2$s'; // original string. %1$s is the comment author and %2$s is the post they commented on
            $translated = '%2$s'; // Remove the author and 'on'
            break;
    }

    // Return our modified string. Now the original `sprintf()` function will simply output the link to the post that the author commented on.
    return $translated;
}
add_filter( 'gettext_with_context', 'wpse238430_recent_comments_text', 20, 4 );