The plugin should ignore files with empty metadata ?

[jocelynlecomte]

In my case, the metalsmith-permalinks plugin runs after other plugins which are adding to my
homepage (/index.html) some YAML metadata this way:

- collection: []
- filename: index

and the pattern is ':collection/:filename'. The result is that the homepage is moved to /index/index.html because the replace(pattern, data, options) function finds all the metadata it needs, even though the metadata is empty.

I managed to make it work by adding

- permalink: false

to my homepage.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I wonder if the permalinks plugin should consider 'empty metadata' just like 'no metadata'

[webketje]

With v2.4.0 optional path parts became available.
That means the current results reflect pattern :collection?/:filename rather than :collection/:filename.
If optional path parts are indicated by a question mark, all other path parts are required.
At present, the plugin considers missing required path parts empty strings and processes and outputs the file anyway.

Ideally permalinks would log a warning that a matched file misses a path parameter value.
Maybe it should also throw an error, or it should silently ignore the file.But definitely writing it to a probably unexpected location by the user is not the best default case.