What is the best way to show that something expects a Collection (or array)

Question

My general question is; Is they a way to explain loops (or the traversal of a collection) to customers, without any understanding in informatics ? For example an analogy that everybody could understand.

I'm creating a templating engine designed for users that use Microsoft Word a lot, but don't have a good understanding of how Informatics work.

The aim of the templating engine is to simplify the creation of DocX, so you don't have to enter the name of your client, for each document you create for them. A database (or any backend) can save the corresponding data.

Here's how I planned to demonstrate the library:

=================>

Howewer, for more complex documents, data can be added for each element in a collection

The syntax I used is the mustache-like syntax:

when using

{#clients}
{first_name} {last_name}
{/clients}

it will result in

John Doe
Jane Doe
Eric Frank

Here's how I was planning to explain it to customers:

=================>

Howewer, when testing this with real, it didn't seem very easy to understand.

Is they a way to explain loops (or the traversal of a collection) to customers, without any understanding in informatics ?

Answer 1

I propose to use colon symbol (:) for loops. It contains appropriate semantics:

A colon is used to explain or start an enumeration.

So, try {clients:} instead.

The ending tag could be:

• {clients.} – save semantics, but maybe not very visible
• {:clients} – more consistent with starting tag