title: Is Mediawiki markup context-sensitive?
body: <p>There seems to be disagreement over whether MediaWiki markup (the markup language used to create and edit Wikipedia articles) is context-free or context-sensitive.</p>
  
  <p>See <a href="http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User_talk%3aKanor#Response_to_article_in_Meatball" rel="nofollow">http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User_talk:Kanor#Response_to_article_in_Meatball</a></p>
  
  <p>I would argue that it is obviously context-sensitive.  One example of this would be terminal characters in <a href="http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User_talk%3aKanor#EBNF_rules_for_wiki_lists" rel="nofollow">wikimarkup lists</a>.  Lists are formed like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>* One thing
  * Another thing
  * Yet another thing
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The <em>end</em> of a list item is indicated by a carriage return.  </p>
  
  <p>However, if the list is nested in, say a table or transclusion, then the <em>end</em> of a list item may either be a carriage return, or a table/transclusion terminal symbol.  For example, the following seems to be valid markup:</p>
  
  <pre><code>{{Infobox person
  * One thing
  * Another thing
  * Yet another thing}}
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>However, a parser would need to keep track of the <em>context</em>, e.g. the fact that it is currently nested within a transclusion, when it encounters the <code>}}</code> symbol, instead of an end-line (carriage-return) character, when determining the <em>end</em> of the last list item.</p>
  
  <p>So... how is this possibly <em>not</em> context-sensitive?</p>