Empty Variables

You can also substitute nothing for a variable value. This applies to both text and file object type variables.

To borrow from an earlier example in Text Variables, you may want to publish a generic version of the equipment manual with no company name. For this book you make an assignment to the <company_name> variable that has an empty value. When published, the company name variable will effectively disappear.

Bear in mind that when substituting nothing into a stream of text, you may end up with extra white space. This might occur where the <company_name> variable is substituted with nothing at the end of a sentence and you end up with the space before the company name now being before the full stop. Where this extra space might cause problems, it is recommended that you include any required spacing in the variable values so that when they are substituted the white spacing always looks as you want it.