Literal expressions support?

[VanquishedWombat]

TLDR: This is a possible issue with the parser not ignoring the dot in {{[xxx.yyyy]}} and how to work around that.

Hi - new to your excellent component so be gentle! My use case allows a specific set of admin users to craft templates. As I am replacing a previous system, I have to take on their current formatting which includes a leading @ or # and a dot (period/full-stop) as a segment delimiter. So they might write

{{@xxx.yyyy}}

I understand for handlebars the dot infers a path expression, and the @ or # are likely problematic too as they are not in the list of allowed identifiers.. So I researched at handlebarsjs.com (linked from your github page) and found literal segments. Using this approach I pre-process the end users template into

{{[@]xxx[.]yyyy}}

The docco says that for handlebars.js - like interpretation, this should be acceptable and the bracketed chars would be seen as literal.

However, using a c# dictionary containing the entry: @xxx.yyy I do not get the replacement I expect. In fact no replacement or error ensues.

Here is a simplified version of code which I just ran to produce the issue.

Dictionary<string, object> data = new Dictionary<string, object>{
        { "@xxx.yyyy", "Da valoo"},
        { "tag2", "The tag valoo" }
    };

string sourceVal = "Complax tag > {{[@]xxx[.]yyyy}} < simple tag > {{tag2}} <";

// so we can see the entry
foreach (KeyValuePair<string, object> entry in data)
{
    dbg.log(mn, " tagList[" + entry.Key + "] = [" + entry.Value + "]"); // shows: tagList[@xxx.yyyy] = [Da valoo], tagList[tag2] = [The tag valoo]
}

var template = Handlebars.Compile(sourceVal);
var result = template(data);
dbg.log(mn, "Result: " + result);  // shows: Result: Complax tag >  < simple tag > The tag valoo <

What am I doing wrong ?

EDIT:

I have tried a few more formats, as in:

@xxx.yyyy > {{[@xxx.yyyy]}} > Fail
#xxx.yyyy > {{[#xxx.yyyy]}} > Fail
xxx.yyyy > {{[xxx.yyyy]}} > Fail
@xxx:yyyy > {{[@xxx:yyyy]}} > Ok
@xxx-yyyy > {{[@xxx-yyyy]}} > Ok
xxx-yyyy > {{[xxx-yyyy]}} > Ok
xxx:yyyy > {{[xxx:yyyy]}} > Ok
#xxx:yyyy > {{[#xxx:yyyy]}} > Ok

The first column is the string list, the second column is the template, and the third is the outcome. I conclude that the dot in xxx.yyyy is being seen as significant even though the entire string is delimited by [ and ].

I also tried the same using single and double quotes in place of the [ and ].

How can I 'escape' the dot for the Handlebar.js parser?

[VanquishedWombat]

There's a working c# fiddle here https://dotnetfiddle.net/uYGaK3.