The Lay of the Land

Solutions to common problems.

So there’s a lot to sort out in that list of tags. I’m a longtime developer, so most of it is pretty clear in terms of its purpose. That said, for most items on the list, a little (or a lot) of research is necessary in order to better understand.

Dots#

Some things start with dots that are built into Hugo, and some are from front matter and configurations. It’s not always obvious at first glance which is which.

Current Context#

• {{.}} Current context

Equals#

Three different equals.

• eq This is obviously a comparison operator
• = This is an assignment
• := This operator seems to have a number of rules that I don’t entirely understand. Whole blog posts () have been written about it.

This third operator appears in my premium in the following locations.

• {{ $categories := slice }}
• {{ $paginator := .Paginate .Data.Pages }}
• {{ $script := resources.Get “js/script.js” | minify}}
• {{ $styles := resources.Get “scss/style.scss” | toCSS | minify }}
• {{ $url := printf “%s” .Permalink | absLangURL }}
• {{ range $i, $e := .Params.tags -}}
• {{- range $name, $items := .Site.Taxonomies.categories }}
• {{- range $name, $items := .Site.Taxonomies.tags }}

The = shows up in one place in my premium theme: {{ $categories = $categories | append .Params.Category }}

For now, I can say: these perform their functions (and it’s pretty obvious what functions they perform…

(After the first item, the functions are to paginate, to add a script, to add styles, to print a url, and to iterate through a range of categories and tags. Though I’m not entirely sure of the difference between .Params.tags and .Site.Taxonomies.tags… and I don’t have an idea yet of what {{ $categories := slice does }} )

My main decision for now is that I don’t yet have to entirely understand them to use them–like driving a car without knowing how fuel injection works. These were built into the template that I purchased and they work.)