How to use variables as colors?

Question

Dear PlantUML community,

could you help me out with using the variable !$MY_COLOR instead of #FF00FF for participant B

Thanks in advance,

Andy

@startuml
!$MY_COLOR = "#FF00FF"
participant A
participant B#FF00FF
'participant C$MY_COLOR
A -> B : Method()
A -> C: Method()
@enduml

Answer 1

It is fine to use a space between the participant name and the colour, like this:

participant C $MY_COLOR

But to get it working without the space, you need the ## operator:

participant C##$MY_COLOR

Comments

Hello Martin,

thanks much:

1. stupid space  . Nevertheless it is a bit strange for my why no space is needed with #FF00FF.

2. Link to the page https://plantuml.com/de/preprocessing is very helpful ( #pragma in c-language equals ! in PlantUML )

Cheers Andy

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Plantuml doesn't use a formal grammar for its syntax, so there are a few quirks around what works and what doesn't.