CFML: That <cfexit> bug I thought I had spotted: solved

G'day:
Yesterday I asked for some help understanding a mismatch between some code and some docs: "Are the docs for <cfexit> wrong, or am I misunderstanding?".

I just looked at this some more, and discovered the docs are right, Railo is right, and <cfexit> is right. However there's still a bug in ColdFusion...

Here's a refined repro case:

<!--- testusingCfimport.cfm --->
<cfimport taglib="." prefix="t">
<t:basic>
    Text within tags<br>
</t:basic>
<hr>

<t:basic exitMethod="exittag">
    Text within tags<br>
</t:basic>
<hr>

<t:basic exitMethod="exittemplate">
    Text within tags<br>
</t:basic>
<hr>

<!--- basic.cfm --->
<cfparam name="attributes.exitMethod" default="">
executionMode: <cfoutput>#thisTag.executionMode#</cfoutput><br>
<cfif thisTag.executionMode EQ "start">
    <cfif len(attributes.exitMethod)>
        exitMethod: <cfoutput>#attributes.exitMethod#</cfoutput><br>
        <cfexit method="#attributes.exitMethod#">
    <cfelse>
        exitMethod: not specified<br>
        <cfexit>
    </cfif>
</cfif>

So what happens here is that I demonstrate each method of <cfexit> except for loop: basically demonstrating each of these:
<cfexit>
<cfexit method="exittag">
<cfexit method="exittemplate">

The output is thus:

executionMode: start
exitMethod: not specified


---

executionMode: start
exitMethod: exittag


---

executionMode: start
exitMethod: exittemplate
Text within tags
executionMode: end


---

Note the default behaviour mirrors exittag, which is exactly what it suggests in the docs, and is exactly what Railo does too. So there's no error anywhere here.

However now I use a CFScript version of the tag:

// scriptVersion.cfm
param attributes.exitMethod="";

writeOutput("executionMode: #thisTag.executionMode#<br>");
if (thisTag.executionMode == "start"){
    if (len(attributes.exitMethod)){
        writeOutput("exitMethod: #attributes.exitMethod#<br>");
        exit attributes.exitMethod;
    }else{
        writeOutput("exitMethod: not specified<br>");
        exit;
    }
}

Same logic: just script instead of tags. The test rig for this is the same as the first one, just calling scriptversion instead of basic:

<!--- testScriptVersion.cfm --->
<cfimport taglib="." prefix="t">
<t:scriptversion>
    Text within tags<br>
</t:scriptversion>
<hr>

<t:scriptversion exitMethod="exittag">
    Text within tags<br>
</t:scriptversion>
<hr>

<t:scriptversion exitMethod="exittemplate">
    Text within tags<br>
</t:scriptversion>
<hr>

And the output on CF11?

executionMode: start
exitMethod: not specified
Text within tags
executionMode: end


---

executionMode: start
exitMethod: exittag


---

executionMode: start
exitMethod: exittemplate
Text within tags
executionMode: end


---

So <cfexit> behaves one way, and just exit behaves another way. That's a bug in the implementation of exit then. I will raise an issue accordingly: 3799016.

---

Do you want to know something funny (at my expense)? Well one might wonder why I am looking at custom tags, suddenly. Well it's because I am in the throes of teaching myself PHP, and I had started by working my way through the CFML tags, and quickly arrived at <cfassociate> (which is a custom-tag-specific tag). So the first thing I decided to do is check how CFML's and PHP's implementations of custom tags goes. So I did all the CFML groundwork, only to then discover... PHP doesn't have the concept of custom tags. Doh! That's 1-0 to CFML, but a bit of a waste of my time over the last few days, getting up to speed with Railo's CFC-based custom tags, and looking at <cfexit> etc. Oh well.

Back to the PHP now...

--
Adam