trailing spaces in code block

[John Gruber]

John MacFarlane <jgm at berkeley.edu> wrote on 6/14/06 at 3:12 PM:


> It seems that Markdown 1.0.1 strips off trailing spaces at the end of

> code blocks.  Is this really what it's supposed to do?  There might be

> reasons to include trailing spaces in code displayed on a web page --

> for example, in demonstrating how to do a hard line break in markdown.

> Even if the trailing spaces aren't visible, they can be cut and 

> pasted.  Besides, Markdown 1.0.1 preserves trailing spaces on

> every line except the last line of a code block.  Is there a reason

> to treat the last line differently?


No, I don't think so. If there is a reason that I implemented it
this way, I have forgotten it, and I can't think of any reason it
should act like this, so I'm calling it a bug in Markdown.pl. (And
in Markdown.php, too, for obvious reasons.)

The fix is easy. Inside _DoCodeBlocks(), change this:

    $codeblock =~ s/\s+\z//; # trim trailing whitespace

to this:

    $codeblock =~ s/\n+\z//; # trim trailing newlines



> The reason I ask is that I've written an implementation of markdown in

> haskell.  It passes all of the tests in the test suite except "Markdown

> Documentation - Syntax.text", which it fails because it retains the

> trailing spaces in the code block at line 572.  I could of course change

> it to remove trailing spaces in code blocks, but if this is a bug and

> not a feature, I'd rather see the test suite changed.  Any thoughts?


Yup. Just remove the spurious spaces at the end of line 572 in
"Markdown > Documentation - Syntax.text".

I'll also add a test to test this "preserve spaces on the last
line of a code block" fix.

Thanks for reporting this John. When (if?) you release your
Haskell port, be sure to add it to the list of implementations
here:

    http://markdown.infogami.com/
    
-J.G.