backslash-escaped characters in markdown input missing in HTML output

[johnoregan]

Hello All,

Can anyone tell me what's going on here?

><nul set /p "=\&\n\b\s\p\;" | pandoc --ascii -f markdown -t html
<p>&amp;;</p>

Where have n, b, s, and p gone?

Thanks!

John

[rnwst]

What shell are you using?

[jgm]

Looks like Windows. My guess is that the \n etc. inside ".." function as control characters in this shell, as they do in most shells.

[johnoregan]

Hi RNW, I'm using the Command Shell (cmd.exe) on Windows 10. Thanks! John

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[johnoregan]

Hi John, The backslash has no special meaning in cmd.exe. The caret is used to escape special characters like less than, ampersand, and pipe. I created a file called pdTest.txt containing: ~~~ \&\n\b\s\p\; ~~~ And executed this command: ~~~

pandoc --ascii -f markdown -t html pdTest.txt

~~~ The output was: ~~~ <p>&amp;;</p> ~~~ Is this a bug? Thanks! John

[jgm]

Here it is in try pandoc:
https://pandoc.org/try/?params=%7B%22text%22%3A%22%5C%5C%26%5C%5Cn%5C%5Cb%5C%5Cs%5C%5Cp%5C%5C%3B%5Cn%22%2C%22to%22%3A%22html5%22%2C%22from%22%3A%22markdown%22%2C%22standalone%22%3Afalse%2C%22embed-resources%22%3Afalse%2C%22table-of-contents%22%3Afalse%2C%22number-sections%22%3Afalse%2C%22citeproc%22%3Afalse%2C%22html-math-method%22%3A%22plain%22%2C%22wrap%22%3A%22auto%22%2C%22highlight-style%22%3Anull%2C%22files%22%3A%7B%7D%2C%22template%22%3Anull%7D
This enables informational messages, and you can see what is happening: \n etc. are being parsed as raw tex commands, and omitted from the HTML.

To avoid this, you could disable raw tex parsing: pandoc -f markdown-raw_tex -t html.
Or double the backslashes to escape them.

[johnoregan]

Hi John, Thanks for the explanation. :) John

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