[pmwiki-users] using PTVs as shortcuts for conditionals

[Ben Stallings]

I tried to use page text variables in a tricksy kind of way, and I'm 
curious why it didn't work.  I have a long if/elseif set of conditionals 
like so:

(:if condition 1:)
message 1
(:else if condition 2:)
message 2
(:else if condition 3:)
message 3
(:else if condition 4:)
message 4

and I want a whole bunch of other stuff (including pagelists, which have 
their own conditionals and so end any conditionals in the containing 
page) to happen only if all of those tests are false.  So I followed 
message 4 with this:

(:flag: yes:)

so that rather than testing conditions 1 through 4 over and over again I 
could just test for

(:if equal {$:flag} "yes":)

... but it doesn't work.  Are all the conditionals on the page evaluated 
before all of the page text variables?  That can't be right, because I 
can use other page text variables in conditionals... so where is the 
proverbial rub?  --Ben