Emphasis with `_`

[John Gruber]

Rad Geek <technophilia at radgeek.com> wrote on 05/24/05 at 8:55 pm:

> For what it's worth, I (still) think that this asymmetry would be a good  
> idea to include in upcoming versions of Markdown.

Good summary, thanks.

My only concern with the proposal for changing the rules for `_` is
that there are some file names which start with them:

    _some_thing_like_this.html

But even then we might be OK, if we say the rules for `_` emphasis are:

1.  Opening emphasis is a `_` at word break position. In regex notation:

        \b_

2.  Closing emphasis is a `_` followed by anything other than a
    number or letter.
    
With these two rules, you could write something like this:

    Delete _this_file.html and _that_file.html.

and all the `_`s would be treated literally.

-J.G.