Expression Escape

Fields with this badge accept expression escape.

Expression escape allows a Javascript expression to be evaluated to a string and inserted into of a field's value. Expression escape can be used in most tasks' configuration dialogs. Expression escape Javascript is written by surrounding a Javascript expression with the <? and ?> operators.

In the example above, the value of the variables person and me are escaped into the command to execute. If person has the value "mike" and me has the value "dave", the resulting command becomes echo "Hello mike my name is dave".

Whitespace

Whitespace inside the <? and ?> operators is handled by Javascript. For example:

Hello<? person ?>. will become Hellomike.

Hello <? person ?>. will become Hello mike.

Since Javascript ignores whitespace, formatting must occur outside of the escaped expression.

Conversion to String

The result of the expression escape is always a string of UTF-8 characters. When the result of the Javascript expression is not a string it is converted to one with an implicit call to the object's toString() function.