Use Curly Brackets to Denote Placeholders

Context and Problem Statement

When crafting an ADR placeholders need to be replaced by real values. How to mark the placeholders?

Considered Options

• Use curly braces
• Use square brackets
• Use less-than and greater-than

Decision Outcome

Chosen option: “Use curly braces”, because comes out best (see below).

Pros and Cons of the Options

Use curly braces

Example: {option 1}.

• Good, because consistent to mustache templates.
• Good, because no confusion with Markdown notation for links

Use square brackets

Example: [option 1].

• Good, because used in MADR 1.x and MADR 2.x
• Bad, because confusion with Markdown notation for links
• Bad, because some users did not remove the brackets. Example: Date: [2021-03-12] or Good, because [user no longer activatess shortcut accidentally when entering task].

Use less-than and greater-than

Example: <option 1>

Idea taken from https://github.com/schubmat/DecisionCapture/blob/master/templates/captureTemplate_full.md

• Good, because kept in Markdown as is
• Bad, because could be mixed up with an HTML element