githubhyperlinkmarkdowngithub-flavored-markdownautolink

How do I prevent auto-generated links in the GitHub wiki?

On a GitHub wiki page, if I type:

www.foobar.com

GitHub automatically assumes this is a URL and makes the text a hyperlink to http://www.foobar.com. However, sometimes I do not want a hyperlink to be created. Is there a way to stop this behavior? Perhaps some sort of markdown?

Solution

  • Update Nov. 2021, VSCode 1.63:

    This issue should be allievated with issue 136198 "markdown preview wrongly creates links "

    While "markdown.preview.linkify": false will disable linkify features entirely, setting md.linkify.fuzzyLink to false will disable it only for links without http(s) header.
    Which, I think, is a better alternative, and it's already supported by markdown-it.

    Original answer (2014): This isn't limited to wiki page, and is part of the GFM (GitHub Flavored Markdown) url autolinking feature.

    Putting them in `` can work but display the url as a code: foo http://example.com bar.

    foo `http://example.com` bar

    Another trick (mentioned in this gist) is

    ht<span>tp://</span>example.com

    That will display http://example.com as regular text.

    In your case (without the http://)

    w<span>ww.</span>foobar.com

    That would also display www.foobar.com as regular text.

    geekley adds in the comments:

    For emails, you can use foo<span>@</span>example.com

    Venryx suggests in the comments a shorter/cleaner solution:

    Just add one of the void element tags (I prefer <area>), at a location that breaks the URL detectability, eg. right before the first dot.

    Example: www<area>.foobar.com