[Springframework-developer] Weird freemarker behavior with spring.ftl

[<jo....@us...>]

Hi,

in certain cases i get this freemarker exception:

Expression spring is undefined on line 81, column 44 in spring.ftl. The 
problematic instruction: ---------- ==> assignment: 
stringStatusValue=spring.status.value?default("") [on line 81, column 
17 in spring.ftl]  in user-directive spring.bind

In short, the case that is causing problems is:

my template main.ftl includes other templates, located in the 
subdirectory components. If main.ftl doesn't, but several of the 
components import spring.ftl, the error occurs.

Sadly, I don't have enough time to throw at this to track down the 
exact freemarker problem.
But regardless it highligts what seems to be an unnecessary and 
unwanted reference to the spring variable in spring.ftl.

 From what I can see, spring.ftl doesn't assign or need the spring 
variable, and therefore shouldn't reference it.
In addition to the error I get, this reference unnecessarily forces 
users to assign spring.ftl to the spring variable/hash, doesn't it?

I have attached a proposed patch that just removes the 'spring.' from 
all expressions in spring.ftl.

Am I missing something?

jo