Status: Accepted
Owner: ----
Labels: Type-Enhancement Priority-High Target-2.5 bwic

New issue 564 by pekka.klarck: Disallow using `...@{list}` variables with settings that require scalar values to ease parsing
http://code.google.com/p/robotframework/issues/detail?id=564

Using list variables with settings that require scalar values is
problematic because the variable may expand into any number of values
(including zero). Consider the example below where it's impossible to split
the setting values into name and arguments reliably:

| Library     | @{VAR1} | arg |
| Suite Setup | @{VAR2} | arg |

As part of refactoring parsing modules (issue 487) we realized that further
processing of the parsed data is a lot easier if setting values can be
split into names and arguments in cases such as above. Tho make that
possible, we decided to disallow using list variables in places where a
scalar value is needed. In practice this means that the above examples
won't work anymore.

The settings that were affected are:
- Library, Resource, and Variables imports
- Setups and Teardowns
- Timeouts

It is still possible to use scalar variables in these places, and list
variables work with arguments. For example these usages are still valid:

| Library     | LibName | @{VAR1} | arg |
| Suite Setup | ${KW}   | @{VAR2} | arg |


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