Simetrical skrev:
Well, if the expansion is deferred that should be decided by the individual parser function, not by the call syntax for the template. Either way, I think some more careful benchmarking is needed here before anyone can say what limits are best to add. One thing that's for sure is that it's the templates/conditionals specifically that are the problem, not refs or links or whatever: replaceVariables takes up something like 50% of CPU time now, or what? There are charts around somewhere.
Interestingly enough I'm coding the ReplaceVariable in Delphi Pascal right now using highly optimized code. Although implementing it "my way" I'll soon be able to produce "any metrics" about exactly what's time consuming in which template, on which page, in the entire enWP.
I can already say (after having profiled it "hundreds of times") that you are perfectly right in that the "links or whatever" is NOT taking much CPU at all, especially not in comparison with ReplaceVariables.
My dump-processor expands templates (most of it), but not parsing HTML, at least not yet.
Regards,
// Rolf Lampa