I had to delve into core to find this nasty bug.

scenario:

In file A there is an embed call like so:

In file B there is a reference to the embedded variable by_year like so:

problem:

Unfortunately, because within the month_links tag {year} is a single variable, all variations of the word “year” within tags are replaced.  So instead of {embed:by_year} being replaced with the variable passed-in (segment_3’s value in the above case), it becomes “embed:by_2008” for the current year.  Here’s the output from core.php before it gets sent through the php evaluator:

PHP barfs on ‘if(“2008” == embed:by_"2008”)’ with a syntax error stating an incorrectly placed “:”.

Would be nice if the parser would check surrounding characters to each single-variable.  i.e. {year} != {embed:by_year} when parsing

This is on EE1.6.3 - but I didn’t spot a reference to a similar fix for 1.6.4 ...

On it, thanks for the report.

Am I correct in my assumption that you are referring to this setup?

Template 1

Template 2 (embeded in template 1)

whoops - yes, I don’t know how I missed that one.  Must have removed the offending code (references to by_year inside the month_links tag) by accident.

bug?

This is a known issue. The current template parser expects early-parsed conditionals to be on the left-hand side of the conditional, and a quoted value to be on the right.  It’s unable to do so in this case. When the {exp:weblog:month_links} tag parses its conditionals, it gobbles the ‘year’ portion of ‘embed:by_year’, leaving:

Currently, a working solution is to reverse the conditional, and wrap the ‘matching phrase’ in quotes:

Also, while quoting a variable can pose a security risk (please see #6), it shouldn’t be a concern with {year}.

housekeeping.