User:Tcncv/Geodist/consume

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This template will force evaluation of the supplied parameter, but does not produce any output.

This is needed because of all of the nested calculations performed by the Geodist template. Mediawiki apparently has a deferred evaluation mechanism that postpones expression evaluation until the result of that expression (or some dependent expression) is actually used to produce output. The problem is that there is an apparent limit to the accumulated complexity of the unevaluated expressions. If that limit is exceeded, the Geodist template will fail. By calling this template, evaluation of any expression contained in the supplied parameter is forced. (Note that the preceening is speculation based on observed behavior.)