Symbol renaming should work in StringTemplate expressions

[szhorvat]

It would be nice if renaming worked in this situation:

foo = 3;
Print[foo]
template  = StringTemplate["The number is <*foo+1*>"]

foo appears in the string as well, between the <*...*> expression delimiters. When renaming this symbol, it should also be renamed in the string.

Of course, this should be low priority.

Also, StringTemplate allows specifying non-default expression delimiters, so renaming couldn't possibly work in every situation.

[halirutan]

I need to look at the behaviour and understand the consequences better. The problem I see is that something like this is possible (and maybe commonly used?)

foo = 1;
t = StringTemplate["a is <*foo*>"];

TemplateApply[t]

Block[{foo = 2},
 TemplateApply[t]
 ]

Since I don't see the variable inside the template in the Block and cannot make a valid reference, renaming foo would break the code. But maybe this is not an issue.

What I can try is to extract the portion inside <*..*> and make it act as it would be normal code. It's completely similar to Kotlin's string injection and I'm sure I would find how this can be implemented.

[szhorvat]

Thinking more about it, I think you're right. There is no good way to determine the scope of symbols in a string template.

It's better to leave things as they are. The current behaviour is not "smart", but it is predictable, which is good.

[szhorvat]

Also, the delimiters are customizable and not infrequently customized.

I would close this issue for now.

If it's implemented, the thing to look at are "language injections", I think.

https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/using-language-injections.html

I thought I got R code injected into an Mma string once, but I can no longer do it. Maybe I am misremembering.