MARKDOWNIFY(1)

💖 MARKDOWNIFY(1) 💖

okay so bestie, pull up a chair, because today we're talking about markdownify from the User Commands corner of your friendly neighborhood manual. yes, the number 1 means "user commands," we love a consistent naming convention, slay 🎀

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✨ NAME ✨

markdownify — convert HTML to Markdown 🦋

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

here's the whole vibe, straight up:

usage: markdownify [-h] [-s [STRIP ...]] [-c [CONVERT ...]] [-a]
       [--default-title] [--heading-style {atx,atx_closed,underlined}]
       [-b BULLETS] [--strong-em-symbol {*,_}] [--sub-symbol SUB_SYMBOL]
       [--sup-symbol SUP_SYMBOL] [--newline-style {spaces,backslash}]
       [--code-language CODE_LANGUAGE] [--no-escape-asterisks]
       [--no-escape-underscores] [-i [KEEP_INLINE_IMAGES_IN ...]]
       [--table-infer-header] [-w] [--wrap-width WRAP_WIDTH]
       [--bs4-options BS4_OPTIONS] [html]

and what does it DO? it converts html to markdown. that's it. that's the job. iconic, honestly 💅

🫶 positional arguments:

• html — the html file you wanna convert. if you don't hand it one, it defaults to STDIN, so you can just pipe stuff in like the main character you are. 👑

🧚 options:

• -h, --help — shows this help message and then dips. bye bestie 👋
• -s, --strip [STRIP ...] — a list of tags to strip out. ⚠️ heads up though: you can't use this one together with the --convert option. it's one or the other, no mixing.
• -c, --convert [CONVERT ...] — a list of tags to convert. and yeah, same rule, bestie: this one can't be used with the --strip option either. pick a lane 💀
• -a, --autolinks — a boolean saying whether the 'automatic link' style should be used when a a tag's contents match its href. so when the text is the link, you get the cute shorthand instead of the long version. ate. 🔥
• --default-title — a boolean that sets the title of a link to its href when no title was given. no title? fine, we'll make one. periodt.
• --heading-style {atx,atx_closed,underlined} — defines how headings get converted. you've got three flavors, pick your fave ✨
• -b, --bullets BULLETS — a string of bullet styles to use. the bullet alternates based on nesting level, so your nested lists stay visually distinct. it's giving organized. 💜
• --strong-em-symbol {*,_} — use * or _ to convert strong and italics text. choose your fighter.
• --sub-symbol SUB_SYMBOL — defines the chars that surround <sub>. 🍓
• --sup-symbol SUP_SYMBOL — defines the chars that surround <sup>. 🍓
• --newline-style {spaces,backslash} — defines the style of <br> conversions: either two spaces, or a backslash at the end of the line that should break. ✌️
• --code-language CODE_LANGUAGE — defines the language that should be assumed for all <pre> sections. all of them. no discrimination. 💅
• --no-escape-asterisks — do not escape * to \* in text. live dangerously, bestie 😭
• --no-escape-underscores — do not escape _ to \_ in text. same energy, different character 🙈
• -i, --keep-inline-images-in [KEEP_INLINE_IMAGES_IN ...] — so normally, when images live inside headlines or table cells, they get converted to their alt-text. but if you want some of those inline images to become actual markdown images instead, set this option to a list of parent tags that are allowed to contain inline images. very specific, very powerful, we stan a nuanced flag 🧚
• --table-infer-header — when a table has no header row (meaning there's no <thead> or <th> anywhere), it'll use the first body row as the header row. improvise, adapt, slay. 🌈
• -w, --wrap — wrap all text paragraphs at --wrap-width characters. 📏
• --wrap-width WRAP_WIDTH — ok so the original manual page literally gives no description for this one 💀 it's just sitting there, mysterious and unexplained. all we know is what -w, --wrap tells us above. moving on!
• --bs4-options BS4_OPTIONS — specifies the parser that BeautifulSoup should use to parse the HTML markup. examples include 'html5.parser', 'lxml', and 'html5lib'. ⭐

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

this manual page was written by Aryan Karamtoth <spaciouscoder78@disroot.org> for the Debian GNU/Linux system — though it may be used by others too, so go off, other distros 💖

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and that's the whole page, bestie! this one's markdownify 1.2.2, dated March 2026, and it's a MARKDOWNIFY(1) user command through and through. go convert some html, you absolute icon 🦋✨💜