Last modified: 2011-04-14 18:09:12 UTC
Normally, whitespace is stripped from the beginning and end of template parameters. When the parameter is unnamed, however, whitespace stripping does not occur. In [[m:Help:Newlines and spaces]] and [[m:Help:Template#Stripping of spaces and newlines]], this is described as a "probable bug", and I agree, since there appears to be no logical reason for the inconsistency. It also leads to unexpected results and confusion in Wikipedia template calls, and there is no apparent workaround. Can this inconsistency be addressed?
*** Bug 8533 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Created attachment 5898 [details] stirp unnamed params The software makes white-space stripping from named parameters as something for backward compatibility. However it seems to be an almost universal assumption that unnamed parameters should be treated in the same way a named ones and it makes sense for consistency.
That should have been "The software marks", not "makes".
This behaviour has always been present, and was reimplemented at great cost when the preprocessor was rewritten for MW 1.12, because reproducing this whitespace behaviour precisely was the only way to avoid breaking large numbers of existing templates.
So it's a wontfix, i guess
