From 43486f8575199cb43b4626d3bee20e826853bc03 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Waylan Limberg Date: Mon, 15 Jun 2009 21:48:55 -0400 Subject: Moved perl's MarkdownTest test files into new testing framework. One 2004 test and 23 2007 tests are failing so I set them to be skipped for now. We'll have to explore those failures later. A few may be issues with normalization, but most appear to be edgecases with markdown. --- .../Markdown Documentation - Syntax.text-out | 957 --------------------- 1 file changed, 957 deletions(-) delete mode 100644 MarkdownTest/Tests_2004/Markdown Documentation - Syntax.text-out (limited to 'MarkdownTest/Tests_2004/Markdown Documentation - Syntax.text-out') diff --git a/MarkdownTest/Tests_2004/Markdown Documentation - Syntax.text-out b/MarkdownTest/Tests_2004/Markdown Documentation - Syntax.text-out deleted file mode 100644 index ecf2e70..0000000 --- a/MarkdownTest/Tests_2004/Markdown Documentation - Syntax.text-out +++ /dev/null @@ -1,957 +0,0 @@ - - - - - - - -

Markdown: Syntax

- - -

Note: This document is itself written using -Markdown; you can see the -source for it by adding '.text' to the URL.

-
-

Overview

-

Philosophy

-

Markdown is intended to be as easy-to-read and easy-to-write as -is feasible.

-

Readability, however, is emphasized above all else. A -Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain -text, without looking like it's been marked up with tags or -formatting instructions. While Markdown's syntax has been -influenced by several existing text-to-HTML filters -- including -Setext, -atx, Textile, reStructuredText, -Grutatext, and -EtText -- the single -biggest source of inspiration for Markdown's syntax is the format -of plain text email.

-

To this end, Markdown's syntax is comprised entirely of -punctuation characters, which punctuation characters have been -carefully chosen so as to look like what they mean. E.g., asterisks -around a word actually look like *emphasis*. Markdown lists look -like, well, lists. Even blockquotes look like quoted passages of -text, assuming you've ever used email.

-

Inline HTML

-

Markdown's syntax is intended for one purpose: to be used as a -format for writing for the web.

-

Markdown is not a replacement for HTML, or even close to it. Its -syntax is very small, corresponding only to a very small subset of -HTML tags. The idea is not to create a syntax that makes -it easier to insert HTML tags. In my opinion, HTML tags are already -easy to insert. The idea for Markdown is to make it easy to read, -write, and edit prose. HTML is a publishing format; -Markdown is a writing format. Thus, Markdown's formatting -syntax only addresses issues that can be conveyed in plain -text.

-

For any markup that is not covered by Markdown's syntax, you -simply use HTML itself. There's no need to preface it or delimit it -to indicate that you're switching from Markdown to HTML; you just -use the tags.

-

The only restrictions are that block-level HTML elements -- e.g. -<div>, <table>, -<pre>, <p>, etc. -- must be -separated from surrounding content by blank lines, and the start -and end tags of the block should not be indented with tabs or -spaces. Markdown is smart enough not to add extra (unwanted) -<p> tags around HTML block-level tags.

-

For example, to add an HTML table to a Markdown article:

-
-This is a regular paragraph.
-
-<table>
-    <tr>
-        <td>Foo</td>
-    </tr>
-</table>
-
-This is another regular paragraph.
-
-
-

Note that Markdown formatting syntax is not processed within -block-level HTML tags. E.g., you can't use Markdown-style -*emphasis* inside an HTML block.

-

Span-level HTML tags -- e.g. <span>, -<cite>, or <del> -- can be -used anywhere in a Markdown paragraph, list item, or header. If you -want, you can even use HTML tags instead of Markdown formatting; -e.g. if you'd prefer to use HTML <a> or -<img> tags instead of Markdown's link or image -syntax, go right ahead.

-

Unlike block-level HTML tags, Markdown syntax is -processed within span-level tags.

-

Automatic Escaping for Special Characters

-

In HTML, there are two characters that demand special treatment: -< and &. Left angle brackets are -used to start tags; ampersands are used to denote HTML entities. If -you want to use them as literal characters, you must escape them as -entities, e.g. &lt;, and -&amp;.

-

Ampersands in particular are bedeviling for web writers. If you -want to write about 'AT&T', you need to write -'AT&amp;T'. You even need to escape ampersands -within URLs. Thus, if you want to link to:

-
-http://images.google.com/images?num=30&q=larry+bird
-
-
-

you need to encode the URL as:

-
-http://images.google.com/images?num=30&amp;q=larry+bird
-
-
-

in your anchor tag href attribute. Needless to say, -this is easy to forget, and is probably the single most common -source of HTML validation errors in otherwise well-marked-up web -sites.

-

Markdown allows you to use these characters naturally, taking -care of all the necessary escaping for you. If you use an ampersand -as part of an HTML entity, it remains unchanged; otherwise it will -be translated into &amp;.

-

So, if you want to include a copyright symbol in your article, -you can write:

-
-&copy;
-
-
-

and Markdown will leave it alone. But if you write:

-
-AT&T
-
-
-

Markdown will translate it to:

-
-AT&amp;T
-
-
-

Similarly, because Markdown supports inline -HTML, if you use angle brackets as delimiters for HTML tags, -Markdown will treat them as such. But if you write:

-
-4 < 5
-
-
-

Markdown will translate it to:

-
-4 &lt; 5
-
-
-

However, inside Markdown code spans and blocks, angle brackets -and ampersands are always encoded automatically. This -makes it easy to use Markdown to write about HTML code. (As opposed -to raw HTML, which is a terrible format for writing about HTML -syntax, because every single < and -& in your example code needs to be escaped.)

-
-

Block Elements

-

Paragraphs and Line Breaks

-

A paragraph is simply one or more consecutive lines of text, -separated by one or more blank lines. (A blank line is any line -that looks like a blank line -- a line containing nothing but -spaces or tabs is considered blank.) Normal paragraphs should not -be intended with spaces or tabs.

-

The implication of the "one or more consecutive lines of text" -rule is that Markdown supports "hard-wrapped" text paragraphs. This -differs significantly from most other text-to-HTML formatters -(including Movable Type's "Convert Line Breaks" option) which -translate every line break character in a paragraph into a -<br /> tag.

-

When you do want to insert a <br /> -break tag using Markdown, you end a line with two or more spaces, -then type return.

-

Yes, this takes a tad more effort to create a <br -/>, but a simplistic "every line break is a <br -/>" rule wouldn't work for Markdown. Markdown's -email-style blockquoting and -multi-paragraph list items work best -- and -look better -- when you format them with hard breaks.

- -

Markdown supports two styles of headers, Setext and -atx.

-

Setext-style headers are "underlined" using equal signs (for -first-level headers) and dashes (for second-level headers). For -example:

-
-This is an H1
-=============
-
-This is an H2
--------------
-
-
-

Any number of underlining ='s or -'s -will work.

-

Atx-style headers use 1-6 hash characters at the start of the -line, corresponding to header levels 1-6. For example:

-
-# This is an H1
-
-## This is an H2
-
-###### This is an H6
-
-
-

Optionally, you may "close" atx-style headers. This is purely -cosmetic -- you can use this if you think it looks better. The -closing hashes don't even need to match the number of hashes used -to open the header. (The number of opening hashes determines the -header level.) :

-
-# This is an H1 #
-
-## This is an H2 ##
-
-### This is an H3 ######
-
-
-

Blockquotes

-

Markdown uses email-style > characters for -blockquoting. If you're familiar with quoting passages of text in -an email message, then you know how to create a blockquote in -Markdown. It looks best if you hard wrap the text and put a -> before every line:

-
-> This is a blockquote with two paragraphs. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,
-> consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam hendrerit mi posuere lectus.
-> Vestibulum enim wisi, viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet vitae, risus.
-> 
-> Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum sit amet velit. Suspendisse
-> id sem consectetuer libero luctus adipiscing.
-
-
-

Markdown allows you to be lazy and only put the -> before the first line of a hard-wrapped -paragraph:

-
-> This is a blockquote with two paragraphs. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,
-consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam hendrerit mi posuere lectus.
-Vestibulum enim wisi, viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet vitae, risus.
-
-> Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum sit amet velit. Suspendisse
-id sem consectetuer libero luctus adipiscing.
-
-
-

Blockquotes can be nested (i.e. a blockquote-in-a-blockquote) by -adding additional levels of >:

-
-> This is the first level of quoting.
->
-> > This is nested blockquote.
->
-> Back to the first level.
-
-
-

Blockquotes can contain other Markdown elements, including -headers, lists, and code blocks:

-
-> ## This is a header.
-> 
-> 1.   This is the first list item.
-> 2.   This is the second list item.
-> 
-> Here's some example code:
-> 
->     return shell_exec("echo $input | $markdown_script");
-
-
-

Any decent text editor should make email-style quoting easy. For -example, with BBEdit, you can make a selection and choose Increase -Quote Level from the Text menu.

-

Lists

-

Markdown supports ordered (numbered) and unordered (bulleted) -lists.

-

Unordered lists use asterisks, pluses, and hyphens -- -interchangably -- as list markers:

-
-*   Red
-*   Green
-*   Blue
-
-
-

is equivalent to:

-
-+   Red
-+   Green
-+   Blue
-
-
-

and:

-
--   Red
--   Green
--   Blue
-
-
-

Ordered lists use numbers followed by periods:

-
-1.  Bird
-2.  McHale
-3.  Parish
-
-
-

It's important to note that the actual numbers you use to mark -the list have no effect on the HTML output Markdown produces. The -HTML Markdown produces from the above list is:

-
-<ol>
-<li>Bird</li>
-<li>McHale</li>
-<li>Parish</li>
-</ol>
-
-
-

If you instead wrote the list in Markdown like this:

-
-1.  Bird
-1.  McHale
-1.  Parish
-
-
-

or even:

-
-3. Bird
-1. McHale
-8. Parish
-
-
-

you'd get the exact same HTML output. The point is, if you want -to, you can use ordinal numbers in your ordered Markdown lists, so -that the numbers in your source match the numbers in your published -HTML. But if you want to be lazy, you don't have to.

-

If you do use lazy list numbering, however, you should still -start the list with the number 1. At some point in the future, -Markdown may support starting ordered lists at an arbitrary -number.

-

List markers typically start at the left margin, but may be -indented by up to three spaces. List markers must be followed by -one or more spaces or a tab.

-

To make lists look nice, you can wrap items with hanging -indents:

-
-*   Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.
-    Aliquam hendrerit mi posuere lectus. Vestibulum enim wisi,
-    viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet vitae, risus.
-*   Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum sit amet velit.
-    Suspendisse id sem consectetuer libero luctus adipiscing.
-
-
-

But if you want to be lazy, you don't have to:

-
-*   Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.
-Aliquam hendrerit mi posuere lectus. Vestibulum enim wisi,
-viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet vitae, risus.
-*   Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum sit amet velit.
-Suspendisse id sem consectetuer libero luctus adipiscing.
-
-
-

If list items are separated by blank lines, Markdown will wrap -the items in <p> tags in the HTML output. For -example, this input:

-
-*   Bird
-*   Magic
-
-
-

will turn into:

-
-<ul>
-<li>Bird</li>
-<li>Magic</li>
-</ul>
-
-
-

But this:

-
-*   Bird
-
-*   Magic
-
-
-

will turn into:

-
-<ul>
-<li><p>Bird</p></li>
-<li><p>Magic</p></li>
-</ul>
-
-
-

List items may consist of multiple paragraphs. Each subsequent -paragraph in a list item must be intended by either 4 spaces or one -tab:

-
-1.  This is a list item with two paragraphs. Lorem ipsum dolor
-    sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aliquam hendrerit
-    mi posuere lectus.
-
-    Vestibulum enim wisi, viverra nec, fringilla in, laoreet
-    vitae, risus. Donec sit amet nisl. Aliquam semper ipsum
-    sit amet velit.
-
-2.  Suspendisse id sem consectetuer libero luctus adipiscing.
-
-
-

It looks nice if you indent every line of the subsequent -paragraphs, but here again, Markdown will allow you to be lazy:

-
-*   This is a list item with two paragraphs.
-
-    This is the second paragraph in the list item. You're
-only required to indent the first line. Lorem ipsum dolor
-sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.
-
-*   Another item in the same list.
-
-
-

To put a blockquote within a list item, the blockquote's -> delimiters need to be indented:

-
-*   A list item with a blockquote:
-
-    > This is a blockquote
-    > inside a list item.
-
-
-

To put a code block within a list item, the code block needs to -be indented twice -- 8 spaces or two tabs:

-
-*   A list item with a code block:
-
-        <code goes here>
-
-
-

It's worth noting that it's possible to trigger an ordered list -by accident, by writing something like this:

-
-1986. What a great season.
-
-
-

In other words, a number-period-space sequence at the -beginning of a line. To avoid this, you can backslash-escape the -period:

-
-1986\. What a great season.
-
-
-

Code Blocks

-

Pre-formatted code blocks are used for writing about programming -or markup source code. Rather than forming normal paragraphs, the -lines of a code block are interpreted literally. Markdown wraps a -code block in both <pre> and -<code> tags.

-

To produce a code block in Markdown, simply indent every line of -the block by at least 4 spaces or 1 tab. For example, given this -input:

-
-This is a normal paragraph:
-
-    This is a code block.
-
-
-

Markdown will generate:

-
-<p>This is a normal paragraph:</p>
-
-<pre><code>This is a code block.
-</code></pre>
-
-
-

One level of indentation -- 4 spaces or 1 tab -- is removed from -each line of the code block. For example, this:

-
-Here is an example of AppleScript:
-
-    tell application "Foo"
-        beep
-    end tell
-
-
-

will turn into:

-
-<p>Here is an example of AppleScript:</p>
-
-<pre><code>tell application "Foo"
-    beep
-end tell
-</code></pre>
-
-
-

A code block continues until it reaches a line that is not -indented (or the end of the article).

-

Within a code block, ampersands (&) and angle -brackets (< and >) are -automatically converted into HTML entities. This makes it very easy -to include example HTML source code using Markdown -- just paste it -and indent it, and Markdown will handle the hassle of encoding the -ampersands and angle brackets. For example, this:

-
-    <div class="footer">
-        &copy; 2004 Foo Corporation
-    </div>
-
-
-

will turn into:

-
-<pre><code>&lt;div class="footer"&gt;
-    &amp;copy; 2004 Foo Corporation
-&lt;/div&gt;
-</code></pre>
-
-
-

Regular Markdown syntax is not processed within code blocks. -E.g., asterisks are just literal asterisks within a code block. -This means it's also easy to use Markdown to write about Markdown's -own syntax.

-

Horizontal Rules

-

You can produce a horizontal rule tag (<hr -/>) by placing three or more hyphens, asterisks, or -underscores on a line by themselves. If you wish, you may use -spaces between the hyphens or asterisks. Each of the following -lines will produce a horizontal rule:

-
-* * *
-
-***
-
-*****
-
-- - -
-
----------------------------------------
-
-_ _ _
-
-
-
-

Span Elements

- -

Markdown supports two style of links: inline and -reference.

-

In both styles, the link text is delimited by [square -brackets].

-

To create an inline link, use a set of regular parentheses -immediately after the link text's closing square bracket. Inside -the parentheses, put the URL where you want the link to point, -along with an optional title for the link, surrounded in -quotes. For example:

-
-This is [an example](http://example.com/ "Title") inline link.
-
-[This link](http://example.net/) has no title attribute.
-
-
-

Will produce:

-
-<p>This is <a href="http://example.com/" title="Title">
-an example</a> inline link.</p>
-
-<p><a href="http://example.net/">This link</a> has no
-title attribute.</p>
-
-
-

If you're referring to a local resource on the same server, you -can use relative paths:

-
-See my [About](/about/) page for details.
-
-
-

Reference-style links use a second set of square brackets, -inside which you place a label of your choosing to identify the -link:

-
-This is [an example][id] reference-style link.
-
-
-

You can optionally use a space to separate the sets of -brackets:

-
-This is [an example] [id] reference-style link.
-
-
-

Then, anywhere in the document, you define your link label like -this, on a line by itself:

-
-[id]: http://example.com/  "Optional Title Here"
-
-
-

That is:

- -

The link URL may, optionally, be surrounded by angle -brackets:

-
-[id]: <http://example.com/>  "Optional Title Here"
-
-
-

You can put the title attribute on the next line and use extra -spaces or tabs for padding, which tends to look better with longer -URLs:

-
-[id]: http://example.com/longish/path/to/resource/here
-    "Optional Title Here"
-
-
-

Link definitions are only used for creating links during -Markdown processing, and are stripped from your document in the -HTML output.

-

Link definition names may constist of letters, numbers, spaces, -and punctuation -- but they are not case sensitive. E.g. -these two links:

-
-[link text][a]
-[link text][A]
-
-
-

are equivalent.

-

The implicit link name shortcut allows you to omit the -name of the link, in which case the link text itself is used as the -name. Just use an empty set of square brackets -- e.g., to link the -word "Google" to the google.com web site, you could simply -write:

-
-[Google][]
-
-
-

And then define the link:

-
-[Google]: http://google.com/
-
-
-

Because link names may contain spaces, this shortcut even works -for multiple words in the link text:

-
-Visit [Daring Fireball][] for more information.
-
-
-

And then define the link:

-
-[Daring Fireball]: http://daringfireball.net/
-
-
-

Link definitions can be placed anywhere in your Markdown -document. I tend to put them immediately after each paragraph in -which they're used, but if you want, you can put them all at the -end of your document, sort of like footnotes.

-

Here's an example of reference links in action:

-
-I get 10 times more traffic from [Google] [1] than from
-[Yahoo] [2] or [MSN] [3].
-
-  [1]: http://google.com/        "Google"
-  [2]: http://search.yahoo.com/  "Yahoo Search"
-  [3]: http://search.msn.com/    "MSN Search"
-
-
-

Using the implicit link name shortcut, you could instead -write:

-
-I get 10 times more traffic from [Google][] than from
-[Yahoo][] or [MSN][].
-
-  [google]: http://google.com/        "Google"
-  [yahoo]:  http://search.yahoo.com/  "Yahoo Search"
-  [msn]:    http://search.msn.com/    "MSN Search"
-
-
-

Both of the above examples will produce the following HTML -output:

-
-<p>I get 10 times more traffic from <a href="http://google.com/"
-title="Google">Google</a> than from
-<a href="http://search.yahoo.com/" title="Yahoo Search">Yahoo</a>
-or <a href="http://search.msn.com/" title="MSN Search">MSN</a>.</p>
-
-
-

For comparison, here is the same paragraph written using -Markdown's inline link style:

-
-I get 10 times more traffic from [Google](http://google.com/ "Google")
-than from [Yahoo](http://search.yahoo.com/ "Yahoo Search") or
-[MSN](http://search.msn.com/ "MSN Search").
-
-
-

The point of reference-style links is not that they're easier to -write. The point is that with reference-style links, your document -source is vastly more readable. Compare the above examples: using -reference-style links, the paragraph itself is only 81 characters -long; with inline-style links, it's 176 characters; and as raw -HTML, it's 234 characters. In the raw HTML, there's more markup -than there is text.

-

With Markdown's reference-style links, a source document much -more closely resembles the final output, as rendered in a browser. -By allowing you to move the markup-related metadata out of the -paragraph, you can add links without interrupting the narrative -flow of your prose.

-

Emphasis

-

Markdown treats asterisks (*) and underscores -(_) as indicators of emphasis. Text wrapped with one -* or _ will be wrapped with an HTML -<em> tag; double *'s or -_'s will be wrapped with an HTML -<strong> tag. E.g., this input:

-
-*single asterisks*
-
-_single underscores_
-
-**double asterisks**
-
-__double underscores__
-
-
-

will produce:

-
-<em>single asterisks</em>
-
-<em>single underscores</em>
-
-<strong>double asterisks</strong>
-
-<strong>double underscores</strong>
-
-
-

You can use whichever style you prefer; the lone restriction is -that the same character must be used to open and close an emphasis -span.

-

Emphasis can be used in the middle of a word:

-
-un*fucking*believable
-
-
-

But if you surround an * or _ with -spaces, it'll be treated as a literal asterisk or underscore.

-

To produce a literal asterisk or underscore at a position where -it would otherwise be used as an emphasis delimiter, you can -backslash escape it:

-
-\*this text is surrounded by literal asterisks\*
-
-
-

Code

-

To indicate a span of code, wrap it with backtick quotes -(`). Unlike a pre-formatted code block, a code span -indicates code within a normal paragraph. For example:

-
-Use the `printf()` function.
-
-
-

will produce:

-
-<p>Use the <code>printf()</code> function.</p>
-
-
-

To include a literal backtick character within a code span, you -can use multiple backticks as the opening and closing -delimiters:

-
-``There is a literal backtick (`) here.``
-
-
-

which will produce this:

-
-<p><code>There is a literal backtick (`) here.</code></p>
-
-
-

The backtick delimiters surrounding a code span may include -spaces -- one after the opening, one before the closing. This -allows you to place literal backtick characters at the beginning or -end of a code span:

-
-A single backtick in a code span: `` ` ``
-
-A backtick-delimited string in a code span: `` `foo` ``
-
-
-

will produce:

-
-<p>A single backtick in a code span: <code>`</code></p>
-
-<p>A backtick-delimited string in a code span: <code>`foo`</code></p>
-
-
-

With a code span, ampersands and angle brackets are encoded as -HTML entities automatically, which makes it easy to include example -HTML tags. Markdown will turn this:

-
-Please don't use any `<blink>` tags.
-
-
-

into:

-
-<p>Please don't use any <code>&lt;blink&gt;</code> tags.</p>
-
-
-

You can write this:

-
-`&#8212;` is the decimal-encoded equivalent of `&mdash;`.
-
-
-

to produce:

-
-<p><code>&amp;#8212;</code> is the decimal-encoded
-equivalent of <code>&amp;mdash;</code>.</p>
-
-
-

Images

-

Admittedly, it's fairly difficult to devise a "natural" syntax -for placing images into a plain text document format.

-

Markdown uses an image syntax that is intended to resemble the -syntax for links, allowing for two styles: inline and -reference.

-

Inline image syntax looks like this:

-
-![Alt text](/path/to/img.jpg)
-
-![Alt text](/path/to/img.jpg "Optional title")
-
-
-

That is:

- -

Reference-style image syntax looks like this:

-
-![Alt text][id]
-
-
-

Where "id" is the name of a defined image reference. Image -references are defined using syntax identical to link -references:

-
-[id]: url/to/image  "Optional title attribute"
-
-
-

As of this writing, Markdown has no syntax for specifying the -dimensions of an image; if this is important to you, you can simply -use regular HTML <img> tags.

-
-

Miscellaneous

- -

Markdown supports a shortcut style for creating "automatic" -links for URLs and email addresses: simply surround the URL or -email address with angle brackets. What this means is that if you -want to show the actual text of a URL or email address, and also -have it be a clickable link, you can do this:

-
-<http://example.com/>
-
-
-

Markdown will turn this into:

-
-<a href="http://example.com/">http://example.com/</a>
-
-
-

Automatic links for email addresses work similarly, except that -Markdown will also perform a bit of randomized decimal and hex -entity-encoding to help obscure your address from -address-harvesting spambots. For example, Markdown will turn -this:

-
-<address@example.com>
-
-
-

into something like this:

-
-<a href="&#x6D;&#x61;i&#x6C;&#x74;&#x6F;:&#x61;&#x64;&#x64;&#x72;&#x65;
-&#115;&#115;&#64;&#101;&#120;&#x61;&#109;&#x70;&#x6C;e&#x2E;&#99;&#111;
-&#109;">&#x61;&#x64;&#x64;&#x72;&#x65;&#115;&#115;&#64;&#101;&#120;&#x61;
-&#109;&#x70;&#x6C;e&#x2E;&#99;&#111;&#109;</a>
-
-
-

which will render in a browser as a clickable link to -"address@example.com".

-

(This sort of entity-encoding trick will indeed fool many, if -not most, address-harvesting bots, but it definitely won't fool all -of them. It's better than nothing, but an address published in this -way will probably eventually start receiving spam.)

-

Backslash Escapes

-

Markdown allows you to use backslash escapes to generate literal -characters which would otherwise have special meaning in Markdown's -formatting syntax. For example, if you wanted to surround a word -with literal asterisks (instead of an HTML <em> -tag), you can backslashes before the asterisks, like this:

-
-\*literal asterisks\*
-
-
-

Markdown provides backslash escapes for the following -characters:

-
-\   backslash
-`   backtick
-*   asterisk
-_   underscore
-{}  curly braces
-[]  square brackets
-()  parentheses
-#   hash mark
-+   plus sign
--   minus sign (hyphen)
-.   dot
-!   exclamation mark
-
-
- - -- cgit v1.2.3