How do I escape an '#' in GitLab Markdown? - gitlab

I often use '#' in directory names (because names that start with that character are sorted before names that start with a letter or number).
But if I try to write a path containing a name with that character in Markdown in GitLab it is rendered as a 'mention' (of a user or group). I don't want that. Presumably GitLab might also actually notify the user or group too – I definitely don't want that!
So how can I quote or escape the '#' so that it's rendered normally?

Combine tags for an HTML span with the relevant HTML character entity:
*C:\\<span>#</span>code\my-project*
*~/<span>#</span>code/my-project*
See:
Character Entity Reference Chart – HTML5 Reference – W3C

Wrap all directory names in code spans (single back-ticks). While this is bordering on opinion, many would argue that directory names (paths, URLs, etc.) should be marked up as "code". And if you do wrap them in code spans, then they will not be treated as a "mention".
A Windows path (`C:\\#code\my-project`) and a posix path (`~/#code/my-project`).
The above example gets rendered as...
A Windows path (C:\\#code\my-project) and a posix path (~/#code/my-project).

Related

Why does make use a back quote and single quote around the target name?

I found in all make warning / error messages, it uses a single back quote but then a single quote to highlight the user input.
For example, the error message of the undefined makefile name is like
Makefile `xxx' was not found.
At first I thought it was a typo, but it seems to me it is intended for all messages.
https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/html_node/Error-Messages.html
It is distinct from the modern development to use both single / double quote around the highlight text, e.g. Makefile 'xxx' was not found.
Does anyone know the reason behind it?
I would guess it is a holdover from when fonts were displayed differently. For computer text that was intended to be read by humans, it used to be that (on many systems) using backquote/quote would produce output that resembles the way that English was normally typeset.
Consider for example: https://data.historicaltexts.jisc.ac.uk/view?pubId=bl-001973110&pageId=bl-001973110-660536-22 :
For other information, see for example:
discussion of "backtick-apostrophe" notation
Markus Kuhn's explanation of how the X Window System displayed fonts

How to remove link in MD file?

In my project on gitlab I have some text in *.md files that looks like URL link, e.g. "asp.net" and by default it processes as clickable link. I want it to be processed as regular text. How to do this?
Now I realize .md files process different ways in webpages. Dillinger.io render asp.net as link and stackoverflow and gitlab as plain text.
There are two ways:
put it between two back-ticks
`asp.net` => asp.net
Better Way
Put a ZERO WIDTH NON-JOINER character after the dot:
'‌' as you can see it is not visible. It is also called half-space character. It is usually used in Arabic texts to separate characters:
سلام => س‌ل‌ا‌م
You can use it like:
asp.‌net => asp.net (it is not a link)
‌ is the code for half-space character.

How to search for files faster in Sublime Text 3

Right now I do ⌘t then scroll through autocomplete, or start typing the name (but half the time it doesn't find it).
Sublime doesn't find a file in many cases. For example, I typically have all my files called index.<ext> nested inside some folder. So I might have:
my/long/directory/structure/index.js
my/long/directory/structure2/index.js
my/long/directory/structure3/index.js
my/long/directory/structure.../index.js
my/long/directory/structuren/index.js
my/long/directory/index.js
my/long/directory2/index.js
my/long/directory.../index.js
my/long/directoryn/index.js
my/long/index.js
my/index.js
...
But in sublime you have to search for an exact path. I can't search this:
my directory index
And get results for directory, directory2, directory..., directoryn, I just get empty results because there is not my/directory. I can't remember the full folder path most of the time, so it takes a lot of effort to do so and I end up just navigating in the sidebar to find the file which takes some time.
Wondering if there is a better/faster way of doing this. Basically searching for a file by snippets/keywords of the complete path. So m dir would return my/long/directory, etc.
The first thing to note is that you do not have to search for an exact path; anywhere that Sublime provides you a list of items to select from and a text entry, fuzzy matching is in play. In your example searching just for idx will narrow down the list to all items that have those characters in that order, even if they're not adjacent to each other.
The entries show you visually how they're matching up, and there's a fairly sophisticated system behind the scenes that decides which characters make the best matches (relative to some hidden scoring algorithm):
In addition to this you can use multiple space separated terms to filter down the list. Each term is applied to the list of items resulting from the prior term, so they don't need to be provided in the same order as they appear in the file names.
This helps with searches where you know generally the name of the file, and from there can further drill down on segments of the path or other terms that will help narrow things down:
Something to note here is that as seen in these images, the folder structure is my/long/directory/structure, but the names of the files as seen in the panel don't include the my/ at the start.
In cases where your project contains only one top level folder, that folder isn't presented in the names of the files. Presumably this is because it's common to every file and thus not going to be a useful filter. As such trying to use my in the search field will return no matches unless one of the files has an m and a y somewhere in their filenames.
This isn't the case if there are multiple top level folders; in that case Sublime will include the root folder in the names of the files presented because now it's required to be able to distinguish between files in the different folders:
In addition to this, note that for any given filter text you enter in a panel, Sublime remembers the full text of the item that you selected while that filter text was being used, and uses that in it's scoring to prioritize the matches the next time you search in the same panel. The next time you search with the same term, Sublime will automatically pre-select the item that you picked last time under the theory that you probably want it again.
The search terms and their matches are saved in the session file and in your project's sublime-workspace files, so as you move from window to window and project to project you're essentially training Sublime how to find the files that you want.
My advice would be to try and flip your thinking a little bit. In my opinion the power of the fuzzy matching algorithm works best when you try to find files in a more organic way than trying to replicate the path entirely.
Instead, I would throw a few characters from the name of the file that I'm trying to find first, and then add another term that filters on some part of the path that will disambiguate things more; a term of idx s1 in this example immediately finds the two index.js files that are contained in structure1 folders, for example.
In a more real world example the names of the folders might contain the names of the components that they're a part of or something else that is providing a logical structure to the code, so you might do idx con to pull the index.js from the controller folder or idx mod to find the one in the model folder, and so on.
Regarding a better/faster way to do this I don't think there is one, at least in the general case. Sublime inherently knows every file that's in your project as a part of indexing all of the files to power other features such as Goto Symbol and it uses file watchers to detect changes to the structure of the open folders.
Anything else, including a third party plugin or package, would need to first do a redundant file scan to accumulate the list of files and would also have to replicate the file watching that Sublime is already doing in order to know when things change.

Delimiting quick-open path with fullstops in Sublime Text 3?

I'm making the move to ST3, and I'm having some trouble. I'd like to be able to delimit the quick-open filepath (⌘ + T) with periods instead of slashes or spaces. However, I can't find the setting to do that.
For example:
component.biz_site_promotions.presentation
should be able to open the file that
component biz_site_promotions presentation
would.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
There is no setting in Sublime that changes the way this works; the search term is always used to directly match the text in the list items (except for space characters).
Note however that the Goto Anything panel uses fuzzy matching on the text that you're entering, so in many cases trying to enter an entire file name is more time consuming anyway.
As an example, to find the file you're mentioning, you could try entering the text cbspp, which in this case is the first letters of all of the parts of the file name in question.
As you add to the search term, the file list immediately filters down to text that matches what you entered; first only filenames that contain a C, then only filenames that contain a C that is followed somewhere after by a B, and so on.
Depending on the complexity and number of files that you have in your project, you may need to add in a few extra characters to dial in better (e.g. comb_s_pp). Usually this search method will either end you up at the exact file you want, or filter the list so much that the file that you want will be easier to find and select.
Additionally, when you select an item and there was more than one possible match, Sublime remembers which item you selected for that particular search term and brings it to the top of the search results next time you do it, under the assumption that you want the same thing again.
As you use Sublime more (and with different projects) you will quickly get a handle on what partial search terms work the best for you.
In addition to finding files, you can do other things with that panel as well, such as jumping to a specific line and/or column or searching inside the file for a search term and jumping directly to it. This applies not only to the current file but also the one that you're about to open.
For more complete details, there is a page in the Unofficial Documentation that covers File Navigation with Goto Anything
As an extra aside, starting with Sublime Text build 3154, the fuzzy searching algorithm handles spaces differently than previous builds.
Historically, spaces in the search term are essentially ignored and the entire input is treated as one search term to be matched character by character.
Starting in build 3154, spaces are handled by splitting up a single search term into multiple search terms, which are applied one after the other.
This allows multiple search terms to hit out of order. For example, index doc in build 3154 will find doc/index.html, but it won't find it in previous versions because the terms aren't in the right order.
As such, assuming you're not currently using such a build (as of right now it's a development build, so only licensed users have access to it), moving forward if you continue to search the way you're searching in your question, you might start getting more results than you expected.

What kind of sign is "‎" and what is it used for

What kind of sign is "‎" and what is it used for (note there is a invisible sign there)?
I have searched through all my documents and found a lot of them. They messed upp my htaccess file. I think I got them when I copied webadresses from google to redirect. So maybe a warning searching through your documents for this one also :)
It is U+200E LEFT-TO-RIGHT MARK. (A quick way to check out such things is to copy a string containing the character and paste it in the writing area in my Full Unicode input utility, then click on the “Show U+” button there, and use Fileformat.Info character search to check out the name and other properties of the character, on the basis of its U+... number.)
The LEFT-TO-RIGHT MARK sets the writing direction of directionally neutral characters. It does not affect e.g. English or Arabic words, but it may mess up text that contains parentheses for example – though for text in English, there should be no confusion in this sense.
But, of course, when text is processed programmatically, as when a web server processes a .htaccess file, they are character data and make a big difference.

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