escaping asterisks inside italic block

[adam-p]

Reported in a Google Groups post.

---

Is it possible to escape asterisks within an italic (or bold) block?

What I type in:

*hello* 

\*hello\* 

*\*hello\** 

\**hello*\* 

*hello \* world* 

I expect something like:

<p><em>hello</em></p> 
<p>*hello*</p> 
<p><em>*hello*</em></p> 
<p>*<em>hello</em>*</p> 
<p><em>hello * world</em></p> 

What I get in from markdown-here:

<p><em>hello</em></p> 
<p>*hello*</p> 
<p><em>\</em>hello**</p> 
<p>*<em>hello</em>*</p> 
<p><em>hello \</em> world*</p> 

(style properties removed for readability.) The first two are (as expected) fine. The third thinks I want to italize the backslash. The fourth is the closest, but perhaps I want the asterisks italicized (it sounded fine before I actually read what I am saying ...). From the last it appears that the escaped-asterisk is not considered inside a bold/italic block.

---

Workaround: Instead of trying to escape the asterisks, use one of the HTML entities for asterisk, like: *

[r2evans]

Thanks, despite using other html char entities, I hadn't thought of it here. Sleep deprivation rears its head again ...
(I didn't want to open an "issue" here since I figured it was likely user-error. Sometimes I wish github had some form of discussion area, but then again that would blossom quickly into an unmanageable mess.)

Thx for MDH! (Nice logo, btw.)

[luckv]

Same problem, you save me. Thank you

[o0101]

Like this
*
Asterisk
Okay

[open-sourceress]

Hi, just wanted to throw my 2 cents in. Just found this problem, and luckily this thread.

My paragraph in question is:
*"Wait, is it >help, $help, .help, =help, &help, ^help, %help, \*help, or !help?" -Discord users probably*
I'd expect it to produce:
<p><em>"Wait, is it >help, $help, .help, =help, &amp;help, ^help, %help, *help, or !help?" -Discord users probably</em></p>
But it actually produces:
<p><em>"Wait, is it &gt;help, $help, .help, =help, &amp;help, ^help, %help, \</em>help, or !help?" -Discord users probably*</p>
&ast; does fix the problem (thank you adam-p!) but I would expect \* to do the same.

[r2evans]

Having a bare > in HTML can be problematic, so converting it to > is the safer thing to do. However, the \<\em> is an issue (as is the unconverted trailing asterisk), apparently MDH is missing the preceding backslash. You can force the literal asterisk with *, I think, though that's less convenient and obvious.

[open-sourceress]

I did use * and it does work, but I agree it's less obvious. I will fix the >, thank you for that.

[portersrc]

Is it just me, or does this break inside of backticks, though?
Code:

    *`MACRO_PREFIX_<code>&ast;</code>_SUFFIX` macros are in bytes*

Which renders to:
MACRO_PREFIX_<code>&ast;</code>_SUFFIX macros are in bytes

What we want:
- italics throughout.
- backticks to bring out the macro name.
- an asterisk, so users read it as a wildcard for macros that have a particular form.

What we get:
As we see above, the < code > tag is dumped verbatim inside the macro name.

[portersrc]

Workaround:
Add a closing backtick before the asterisk. Add an opening backtick after the asterisk:

Code:

    *`MACRO_PREFIX_`<code>&ast;</code>`_SUFFIX` macros are in bytes*

Which renders to:
MACRO_PREFIX_*_SUFFIX macros are in bytes