This is a documentation subpage for Template:Void. It may contain usage information, categories and other content that is not part of the original template page. |
This template is used on approximately 864,000 pages, or roughly 1% of all pages. To avoid major disruption and server load, any changes should be tested in the template's /sandbox or /testcases subpages, or in your own user subpage. The tested changes can be added to this page in a single edit. Consider discussing changes on the talk page before implementing them. Preview message: Transclusion count updated automatically (see documentation). |
This template does nothing visually. Technically, it throws away its parameters and outputs the null string.
It is useful for programming advanced templates, and is often used within a template to the right of an equals sign. It may also be used in a template to disambiguate parsing of braces.
It can also be used to temporarily disable code. Unlike "commenting out" using HTML <!-- -->
, it nests. This means that {{void|foo {{void|bar}} baz}}
is valid, whereas <!-- foo <!-- bar --> baz -->
will produce baz -->
.
It provides a particularly concise way of temporarily disabling templates, by prefixing the template name with ^|
, making the template name become the (ignored) first unnamed parameter. For example, suppose you have a page {{Under construction}}
for several days, and wish to change that to {{In use}}
during active editing sessions. Rather than delete the unused template, you can leave both templates in the wikitext and change from {{^|In use|...}}{{Under construction|...}}
to {{In use|...}}{{^|Under construction|...}}
.
Another possible application would be to temporarily disable an infobox on an article page while a problem with the infobox template itself is resolved.
A deeper no-op is {{subst:void|foobar}}
or {{subst:^|foobar}}
. It disappears completely upon saving.