What is hash before brackets (#[ ])?

Questions
1

Hi,

From the docs:

This list is affected: #[
  #set list(marker: [--])
  - Dash
]

This one is not:
- Bullet

Hash means Code, brackets mean Markup. The combination isn’t intuitive. What does it mean?

2

When you are in markup, hash means code, and when you are in code, brackets mean markup.

So when you are in markup, #[ ... ] switches to code and then immediately switches back to markup. Why would you do this? Because [ ... ] also creates a scope for the markup (just like { ... } creates a scope for the code). So #[ ... ] is used in markup to write markup with a limited scope. In this example, the #set list(...) will only affect the next markup line, the rest is out of scope.

1 Like
3

Thanks! The trick is necessary because without hash I’ll get just literal brackets, and not an invisible scope :blush:

1 Like