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Comment by Ezku | Hacker News Reader

Since PHP is a template language at heart, they go ahead and use PHP. For PHP folk, I guess the question is: how do people handle templating simply in other languages, since they can't use the host language itself for that?

EDIT: Disclaimer: I'm a PHP guy trying to make a break for it, and the question was both rethorical and tongue-in-cheek.

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In Python, I've always used string substitution. I've never understood the need for a special templating system when it's already built into the language:

    template = """<boilerplate html>%(greeting)s</boilerplate html>"""
    parts = {'greeting': "Hello, World!"}
    page = template % parts

I create my site-wide template in a module and never have to look at it again, so my application code is mostly logic. When I have to work on PHP or Coldfusion, I don't understand how people can bear to have the logic hidden in a markup language that's mixed up with another markup language. Many can't, and that's why there are templating engines for what are essentially template-based languages.

I prefer Mustache, but there are plenty of alternatives.

http://mustache.github.com/

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