One last addition...

[colinta]

This uses braddunbar's __t= solution to have <%- foo %> work the same as <%= foo %>. Tests updated.

[jashkenas]

@braddunbar -- is this patch necessary? I thought escape already handled this perhaps?

[braddunbar]

No, escape does not handle this. It's handled in Backbone.Model#escape but _.escape still returns 'null'. If _.escape was updated to return '' for null values this would be a non-issue. Is there a reason that _.escape should continue to return 'null' and 'undefined' for null values (backwards compatibility may be a good enough reason)?

+1 - I think it's reasonable to expect that null values are handled consistently in escape and interpolate.

[braddunbar]

FYI, this was discussed in jashkenas/backbone#1227 and it was decided that Backbone.Model#escape should continue to return the empty string.

[braddunbar]

For what it's worth this was also inconsistent in 1.3.1.

brad:~/dev/test$ npm install underscore@1.3.1
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/underscore/1.3.1
npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/underscore/1.3.1
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/underscore/-/underscore-1.3.1.tgz
npm http 200 https://registry.npmjs.org/underscore/-/underscore-1.3.1.tgz
underscore@1.3.1 ./node_modules/underscore
brad:~/dev/test$ node
> require('underscore').template('<%-x%>', {x: null});
'null'

[jashkenas]

FWIW -- it was purposeful. Only strings have a defined "escaped" value. Escaping other objects isn't supported. ... but we can do whatever here.