Posting code on HTM Forum

Community Site News
1

A lot of people are posting code here on the forum, which is great, but can lead to really messy topics. Here are a few markdown pointers for creating readable code posts.

Use code blocks for short snippets

Here’s an example of how to format some python code with triple backticks:

# Utility routine for printing the input vector
def formatRow(x):
  s = ''
  for c in range(len(x)):
    if c > 0 and c % 10 == 0:
      s += ' '
    s += str(x[c])
  s += ' '
  return s

All you have to do is add three backticks on a line by themselves before and after your code. Here is what the actual markdown text of the post looks like:

```
# Utility routine for printing the input vector
def formatRow(x):
  s = ''
  for c in range(len(x)):
    if c > 0 and c % 10 == 0:
      s += ' '
    s += str(x[c])
  s += ' '
  return s
```

Declare the programming language

You may also specify a programming language, like this:

function deduplicateCollaborators(collaborators) {
    var foundLogins = [];
    return _.filter(collaborators, function (collaborator) {
        var duplicate = false
          , login = collaborator.login;
        if (foundLogins.indexOf(login) > -1) {
            duplicate = true;
        } else {
            foundLogins.push(login);
        }
        return ! duplicate;
    });
}

The forum software knows this is javascript because I told typed the word “javascript” immediately after the first set of backticks. The post text looks like this:

```javascript
function deduplicateCollaborators(collaborators) {
    var foundLogins = [];
    return _.filter(collaborators, function (collaborator) {
        var duplicate = false
          , login = collaborator.login;
        if (foundLogins.indexOf(login) > -1) {
            duplicate = true;
        } else {
            foundLogins.push(login);
        }
        return ! duplicate;
    });
}
```

Use Gist or Pastebin for longer code blocks

If you have a large code block to paste, you can use gist or pastebin to store the code. When you paste the URL to those pages, they will embed nicely like this:

2 Likes