New subject: [Mediawiki-l] Unexpected <p> and <br /> from a template

30 Aug 2007

Hi everybody!

Given the following template use:

{{MonthListing
|month=July
|2=Manu.d birthday (1974)
|9=Goofy.g birthday (1932)
|15=Mickey.m birthday (1928)
|17=Siggraph start
|24=Siggraph ends
}}

and given the following template code:

{|
|-
|Day
|Event
{{#if:{{{1|}}}|{{!}}-
{{!}}1
{{!}}{{{1}}}}}
{{#if:{{{2|}}}|{{!}}-
{{!}}2
{{!}}{{{2}}}}}
{{#if:{{{3|}}}|{{!}}-
{{!}}3
{{!}}{{{3}}}}}
{{#if:{{{4|}}}|{{!}}-
{{!}}4
{{!}}{{{4}}}}}
|}

I obtain the following HTML:

<table>

<tr>
<td>Day
</td><td>Event

</td></tr>
<tr>
<td>2
</td><td>Manu.d birthday (1974)
<p><br />
</p>
</td></tr></table>

which all looks nice and dandy except for that

<p><br />
</p>

I have no idea where those tags come from.
I mean, they come from:

{{#if:{{{4|}}}|{{!}}-
{{!}}4
{{!}}{{{4}}}}}

because they are not there if I remove that snippet.
But why 1 and 3 don't do the same?

Is it because I'm using numerical parameter names
and there's an ambiguity between parameter "4" and
the fourth parameter? Are there workarounds?

Manu