How do I do for i=1, ... i++ without FOREACH?

Let's say I want to do something like this

%FOR{"i" start="2" stop="10" step="1" }%
   * Set Topic_$i = ProjectPage2011p$i
%NEXT{"i"}%

How would I do that without FOREACH?

---

It's buried in Faq39, but VarFORMAT has a type="string" mode where you'd use the $item token (there's also a 1-based $index token).

However, you do have to generate the list of numbers to loop over manually..

%FORMAT{
  "2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10"
  type="string"
  format="   * Set Topic_$item = ProjectPage2011p$item"
}%

Test:

• Set Topic_2 = ProjectPage2011p2
• Set Topic_3 = ProjectPage2011p3
• Set Topic_4 = ProjectPage2011p4
• Set Topic_5 = ProjectPage2011p5
• Set Topic_6 = ProjectPage2011p6
• Set Topic_7 = ProjectPage2011p7
• Set Topic_8 = ProjectPage2011p8
• Set Topic_9 = ProjectPage2011p9
• Set Topic_10 = ProjectPage2011p10

NB: Set statements are the very first thing that are processed from the %BASETOPIC% only - dynamically rendered Set statements do not participate in PreferenceSettings (for that, try SetVariablePlugin).

It would be nice if the list of numbers could be generated with a core macro (it seems like it's something CALC should do, but I can't see it), perhaps raise an enhancement task for this.

Although I'm generally pretty negative about commonTagsHandler macros provided by ForEachPlugin and SpreadSheetPlugin, this particular use-case is probably justification enough to keep using it in your own wiki - we did make some effort to ensure ForEachPlugin would continue to work, late in the Foswiki 1.1 development cycle.

-- PaulHarvey - 18 Aug 2011