1057546 - un-quoted HTML tags in macros cause the macro to blow up

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(developer.mozilla.org Graveyard :: KumaScript, defect)

Description

[Eric Shepherd [:sheppy]]

What did you do?
================
If someone inadvertently puts HTML within a macro's braces (that is, for example, "{{SomeMacro<code>(<em>1</em>, <strong>"Hello world"</strong>)}}", things go badly.

What happened?
==============
The parser pretty much explodes, and internal server error tends to result.

What should have happened?
==========================
These tags don't do anything, so stripping them not only isn't a problem, but would solve this issue.

Obviously, tags within quotes need to be preserved, since {{SomeMacro(3, "<em>Hi there</em>")}} is perfectly legit.

Is there anything else we should know?
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Comment 1

[Eric Shepherd [:sheppy]]

Also, obviously this should not take effect if the opening braces are escaped on the macro call, like \{{SomeMacro<code>(<em>1</em>, <strong>"Hello world"</strong>)}}. There, the HTML should remain intact.

Comment 2

[David Walsh :davidwalsh]

This seldom happens and the amount of effort in parsing this would take simply doesn't make sense.  Just like any coding language, we have a right to expect valid use template language.

Comment 3

[Jean-Yves Perrier [:teoli]]

I agree with David here.

There are a mitigating factor here: such kumascript errors appear on the error dashboards and can be fixed using our sheriffing process. Therefore they are annoying for the newbie editor, but far less for the reader (the more we run the sheriffing process, the least annoying it is for him)

Another point to dig in is to understand: why do people add these tags? Maybe we could solve the root cause rather than the symptom.