On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 5:30 PM, Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:

On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 8:17 AM, Ron Laufer gonzoron@hotmail.com wrote:

...

I'm trying to use selective transclusion but via a template and I'm running into recursion issues.

I would like to create a template that, when transcluded in a page (call it page A), causes that page to have a section surrounded by the <onlyinclude></onlyinclude> tags. Then when I transclude page A in page B, only the surrounded section of page A is shown in page B. The trouble of course is that if I put those tags in the template, then they get triggered on the first transclusion into page A. Is there a way to "escape" those tags such that each transclusion strips off a layer of escaping characters?

I'm pretty sure you can't do this; <onlyinclude> etc are interpreted at the same level of parsing as template invocations; by the time you're expanding a template you're too deep already.

-- brion

I remember a similar question on Wikimedia Commons. I'm not sure if it's exactly the same and helps you – the way it was done there was to actually use it on itself.

Something like <onlyi<includeonly/>nclude>foo</onlyinc<includeonly/>lude>. (yeah I know, pretty, isn't it, brion?)

Depending on how it's used it may only work in a "subst:" context, if that's the case and you need it without subst, perhaps try something with a subtemplate using "safesubst:"

- Krinkle