Slightly off-topic, but this did came up...
Can someone manage to type \\ in a comment?
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J. M. ain't a mathematician
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asked Mar 14, 2011 at 2:55
1 Answer
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Yes, we can! Until recently, Arturo's advice to type `\\ ` was the only decent workaround, but a few weeks ago, double backticks have been enabled in comments. Thus, in a comment you can type ``\\`` to obtain \\. For more details have a look here: How do I mark inline code?
answered Mar 14, 2011 at 11:29
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5$\begingroup$ How is it possible that such changes happen without ever notifying the user? Is it reasonable to expect users to be watching two or three meta sites? If half the time spent talking about community were spent actually communicating to the community! $\endgroup$ Mar 14, 2011 at 16:41
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1$\begingroup$ @Mariano: How right you are! That's why I made my question Can we please have a place where changes to the markdown syntax are documented? a feature-request. Alas, to no avail. See also my comment to this answer on meta.SO. $\endgroup$ Mar 14, 2011 at 16:59
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$\begingroup$ @mariano well, if we notified everyone of every tiny thing we did, they would be bored to tears in short order. It is impossible to predict exactly which features are "worthy" of notifying others about. And besides, this change is documented right here, as you can plainly see. :) $\endgroup$ Jun 17, 2011 at 7:38
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$\begingroup$ @Jeff: The only problem is that sometimes it's quite difficult to find some documentation. I've made the experience that you'll only get documentation if you ask a question on a meta site. So while you're right that notifications would be boring for most users, some kind of changelog would be most helpful. (And don't say we have it; many changes need several days to make it to that page.) $\endgroup$ Jun 17, 2011 at 7:48
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$\begingroup$ Hendrik: On a related note: Do you know how I escape a backtick in a comment? Suppose I want a code block containing exactly one backtick. How do I achieve that? The obvious modifications of your code don't seem to work: `` ` ``, ` ` ` $\endgroup$– t.b.Jul 5, 2011 at 22:41
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1$\begingroup$ @Theo: (I see they already confused you - you could have used @Hendrik without it being stripped. Why? There are more than 2 people involved here.) As for the backtick, you've got to escape it with a backslash:
`\``gives`. (This is the reason why you need double backticks if your inline code ends with a backslash!) $\endgroup$ Jul 6, 2011 at 6:14 -
$\begingroup$ Interesting: Why doesn't this work when I surround
\`with blanks (that's what I tried): double backtick blank backslash backtick blank double backticks gives `` ` `` - same with single backtick instead of the doubles: ` ` ` but with further erractic behavior. Thanks for the notifications update, I think I just left the@out because I didn't see the need as it was your answer. I know I'm doing that inconsistently - though I shouldn't have when writing to the ping-master... :) $\endgroup$– t.b.Jul 6, 2011 at 6:41 -
$\begingroup$ @Theo: In comments, you mustn't start or end your inline code with spaces, see the comments here. (You got me laughing at the end of your last comment
:-)) $\endgroup$ Jul 6, 2011 at 6:41 -
$\begingroup$ heh! that was the point... Thanks I think I got it now (but I find this utterly confusing). $\endgroup$– t.b.Jul 6, 2011 at 6:53
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$\begingroup$ @Theo: Confusing indeed, but I realized that only when writing the above comments. Parts can be explained historically: backslash escaping of backticks has been around for a long time, and it had the consequence that comments couldn't end with a backslash. People (including me) complained about this, and then they introduced double backticks in comments. I'm not sure, however, why they started forbidding spaces as start or end characters in inline code; this is only in comments. $\endgroup$ Jul 6, 2011 at 7:00
$$\left\\{\mbox{a set}\right\\}$$and get $$\left\\{\mbox{a set}\right\\}$$ so apparently not. But$$\left\{\mbox{a set}\right\}$$gives $$\left\{\mbox{a set}\right\}$$ On the other hand,$\left(\begin{array}{cc}1&0\\0&1\end{array}\right)$gives $\left(\begin{array}{cc}1&0\\0&1\end{array}\right)$. $\endgroup$\\; this was backtick-double backslash-space-backtick. But it does produce the unwanted space. So there is some rendering problem in the comments. $\endgroup$