MARKDOWN(1)

💖 MARKDOWN(1) — Markdown.pl (User Contributed Perl Documentation) 💖

✨ NAME ✨

Markdown.pl — Convert Markdown syntax to (X)HTML

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

okay so this program is distributed as part of Perl's Text::Markdown module, illustrating sample usage. It's the sample-usage bestie, live and in color 💅

Markdown can be invoked on any file containing Markdown-syntax, and will produce the corresponding (X)HTML on STDOUT:

$ cat file.txt
This is a *test*.

Absolutely _nothing_ to see here. _Just a **test**_!

* test
* Yup, test.
$ Markdown.pl file.txt
<p>This is a <em>test</em>.</p>

<p>Absolutely <em>nothing</em> to see here. <em>Just a <strong>test</strong></em>!</p>

<ul>
<li>test</li>
<li>Yup, test.</li>
</ul>

If no file is specified, it will expect its input from STDIN:

$ echo "A **simple** test" | markdown
<p>A <strong>simple</strong> test</p>

💅 OPTIONS 💅

• version — Shows the full information for this version 👑
• shortversion — Shows only the version number ✨
• html4tags — Produce HTML 4-style tags instead of XHTML. XHTML requires elements that do not wrap a block (i.e. the hr tag) to state they will not be closed, by closing with />. HTML 4-style will plainly output the tag as it comes:

$ echo '---' | markdown
<hr />
$ echo '---' | markdown --html4tags
<hr>

• help — Shows this documentation 🫶

🎀 AUTHOR 🎀

Copyright 2004 John Gruber

Copyright 2008 Tomas Doran

The manpage was written by Gunnar Wolf <gwolf@debian.org> for its use in Debian systems, but can be freely used elsewhere.

For full licensing information, please refer to Text::Markdown.pm's full documentation.

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

Text::Markdown, <http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/>

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🫶 cute sign-off: this page is from perl v5.42.0, dated 2025-12-14, and it's the MARKDOWN(1) manual. Byeee, bestie ✨