On 24/05/05, Rik Wade <rik(a)rikwade.com> wrote:
[...] However, every day, the number of cars
would vary between 0 and n. Is there a way of building this sort of
variable in to a template so that it can be called with a different
number of colours (in this example) for each car in the queue?
No, I'm afraid not - parameters have to be explicitly referred to
within the template. There have been calls for optional parameters, or
even more complex "macro"-like structures, but there has been
resistance amongst the core developers to introducing too much
complexity and ending up with the template code acting as an
interpretter for a whole new language.
The best you can do in the meantime is pass the parameters empty, and
style your template so it doesn't look too ugly with them missing. In
the example you give, it would make sense to use un-named parameters
({{{1}}}, {{{2}}}, {{{3}}}, etc), so that you could call the template
as something like {{car colours|red|blue|green| | | | | | | | | | | }}
(where the template actually always displays 10 colours, but here
leaves the last 7 as " ")
--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]