Parsing inconsistency: lazy paragraph lines in lists
rauschma opened this issue · 4 comments
I found the following parsing inconsistency. It’s obvious why it happens but it feels like an argument in favor of requiring indentation – because without it you once again have to be careful about not starting paragraph lines with special characters (thematic breaks, list item bullets, etc.).
Inside a list
Input:
* abc
- - -Output (the three hyphens become an <hr> after the list and not regular text inside the list item’s paragraph):
<ul>
<li>
abc
</li>
</ul>
<hr>Normal paragraph
Input:
abc
- - -Output:
<p>abc
- - -</p>I wouldn't call it an inconsistency; it's just that the behavior of lazy lines isn't fully described in the (rather sketchy) documentation.
The basic rule the parser uses is this: If a line would not start any other kind of block (besides a paragraph), and the last open container is a paragraph, then it gets added to that paragraph.
Since this line would be a thematic break, it doesn't qualify as a lazy paragraph continuation.
Certainly it's a good practice not to use laziness if you want to avoid this sort of thing. But I don't think that's an argument for banishing laziness.
Ah, I understand: For lazy lines, you have to be more careful w.r.t. how you start your lines.
The basic rule the parser uses is this: If a line would not start any other kind of block (besides a paragraph), and the last open container is a paragraph, then it gets added to that paragraph.
As an aside: It’s interesting that this rule applies at any level of nesting (via indentation or quoting) – each of the following pairs of lines produces the same output.
> > > abc
> > > def
> > > abc
> > def
> > > abc
> def
> > > abc
defYes, that behavior is very counterintuitive:
>> This is inside the nested block quote.
>And so is this.
>And this.
>
>But not this.
renders like this.
But that link also shows the dominance of that interpretation, so it can't really be changed. Gruber's original Markdown also does the same.