# Testing noparse on itself
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/testing-noparse-on-itself/467892
**Category:** About This Message Board
**Created:** [October 14, 2008, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/testing-noparse-on-itself/467892 "2008-10-14T16:24:54Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Lobsang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobsang)
#### Post date: [October 14, 2008, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/testing-noparse-on-itself/467892/1 "2008-10-14T16:24:54Z")
[noparse][noparse][/noparse][/noparse]
There is a nested noparse above (noparse tags within noparse tags) in theory you should see only one.
Good. That works. Now to go use it.
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### Author:  [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)
#### Post date: [October 16, 2008, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/testing-noparse-on-itself/467892/2 "2008-10-16T00:03:01Z")
I’m not sure what behavior you were expecting, but what’s displayed, I suspect, are your second and fourth tags, rather than, as you might have hoped, your second and third tags. Try putting some smileys inbetween your noparse tags to see what I mean; the following is noparse + 🙂 + noparse + ☹ + /noparse + 😕 + /noparse:
[noparse] 🙂 [noparse] ☹ [/noparse] 😕 [/noparse]
As you can see, it’s not that the outer noparse and /noparse cause everything inbetween to be left verbatim; rather, the first noparse gets joined to the first /noparse, while the last /noparse is considered a closing tag without an opening tag.
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### Author:  [@Lobsang](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobsang)
#### Post date: [October 18, 2008, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/testing-noparse-on-itself/467892/3 "2008-10-18T18:46:52Z")
> [@Indistinguishable](#):
>
> I’m not sure what behavior you were expecting, but what’s displayed, I suspect, are your second and fourth tags, rather than, as you might have hoped, your second and third tags. Try putting some smileys inbetween your noparse tags to see what I mean; the following is noparse + 🙂 + noparse + ☹ + /noparse + 😕 + /noparse:
>
> [noparse] 🙂 [noparse] ☹ [/noparse] 😕 [/noparse]
>
> As you can see, it’s not that the outer noparse and /noparse cause everything inbetween to be left verbatim; rather, the first noparse gets joined to the first /noparse, while the last /noparse is considered a closing tag without an opening tag.
I see what you’re saying. But for my simple purposes, even though it doesn’t behave as expected, it still acheived what I wanted, which was to show someone how to do the noparse code.
(in other words to show people how to noparse a web link…
[noparse][noparse][http://www.google.com](http://www.google.com)[/noparse][/noparse]
)