[chaley]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Thanks for the mention of BNF! I've been learning everything myself as I come across stuff -- I learn in my spare time, this isn't part of my curriculum, yet -- so I appreciate any time someone mentions anything I haven't come across yet. (I was wondering a bit what some description were that turns out to be BNF.)

According to Kovid's docs (and thus my understanding),

{authors:uppercase()|prefix|suffix}

is valid but the way you describe it, it must be

{authors:uppercase():|prefix|suffix}

Is this optional, or did you/kovid make a mistake?

I'd test it out myself but I typed this on my Kindle Touch.

I made a mistake in the grammar. That colon should not precede the bar.

It should be

"{" [ "field name" ] [ [ ":" [ "formatting" ] ] [ ":" "single Function" ] [ "|" [ "prefix" ] "|" [ "suffix" ] ] ] "}"

or

"{" [ "field name" ] [ [ ":" [ "formatting" ] ] [ ":'" "Template Program" "'" ] [ "|" [ "prefix" ] "|" [ "suffix" ] ] ] "}"

I think I messed up because I was struggling to deal with the alternation for Template Program Mode and for the optional formatting. Or perhaps because my brain no longer works as well as it once did.