Following up on JBEHAVE-656, this works now correctly for empty strings.
However all other parameters are enclosed in a span twice if an example table is used (this was present in 3.5.4 as well).
Apparently the parameters are marked once using the name enclosed in angle brackets and then once more by string replace, by the function that is used for normal steps as well.
This doesn't cause any change is the HTML display, so it's not a very big problem (the xml looks odd however since the parameter tag appears twice).
Come to think of it, the replacement probably takes place in the wrong order, first the table parameter names are replace by the parameters and second the parameters are replace once again by the operation for normal parameters. If this is done the other way round, it should work correctly.