[Markdown -> HTML] Escaped newlines insert the backslash into rendered document

[benrob0329]

I'm trying to break up a pipe table across multiple lines because the table is too big to reasonably format as a true ascii-art table. The docs say that you can escape a newline by placing a backslash at the end of the line, and that works to keep the table formatted, but also places a backslash in the resulting table cells. I feel like this might be a bug, or I'm missing something because I'm not sure why you'd want to escape a newline and keep the escaping character.

Example:

| This | Is | A | Test | Table |
|:-----|:---|:--|:-----|:------|
| With \
| Cells \
| That are split \
| Across multiple lines \
|
| Though if you want to make a new row \
| You have to have an unescaped newline for the parser to understand \
|

Result:

[jgm]

Pipe table cells cannot be split in this way. They are confined to a single line.
Use a grid or multiline table for your purposes.

[benrob0329]

Ok, hang on, let me try to keep my terms straight here, because there's some confusion from what I wrote.

What I'm trying to do is have each cell on it's own line in the source document by using newline escapes. This works. What is unexpected is the escape character being kept in the final document.

[jgm]

Sorry, I jumped to conclusions. I actually don't understand why pandoc is doing this; you're not supposed to be able to continue cells on a separate line at all. So I need to look into this.

[jgm]

More minimal sample:

| This | Is |
|:-----|:---|
| With \
| Cells

[jgm]

OK, I'm fixing this bug. Sorry - this was never intended to be a way to get table cells on different lines.

[jgm]

Note that the semantics of escaped newlines is that they produce hard line breaks (e.g. <br> in HTML); they don't work like escapes in some programming languages, which just ignore the newline.

[wlupton]

But you can do this, right (backslash-newline without a pipe at the start of the next line)? Will this continue to work?

| This | Is |
|:-----|:---|
| With \
Cells  | And \
Cells

[jgm]

No, it won't.

[benrob0329]

For Posterity, what I've wound up using is this Lua Filter for my prose-heavy table: https://github.com/pandoc-ext/list-table

[wlupton]

Just checking that we're on the same page here, the above minimal example:

| This | Is |
|:-----|:---|
| With \
| Cells

gives this output (with a literal backslash in the HTML):

% pandoc cell-break.md
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th style="text-align: left;">This</th>
<th style="text-align: left;">Is</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: left;">With \</td>
<td style="text-align: left;">Cells</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

but getting rid of the pipe at the start of the last line:

| This | Is |
|:-----|:---|
| With \
Cells

gives this output (with a <br /> element and no literal backslash):

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th style="text-align: left;">This</th>
<th style="text-align: left;">Is</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: left;">With<br />
Cells</td>
<td style="text-align: left;"></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>

I do understand that the manual states that pipe table cells can't contain line breaks, but I had assumed that support for backslash-newline in this context was deliberate. Not so? (If not so, then fine. I am not claiming that this is good practice!)

[jgm]

It wasn't deliberate. After my "fix" above, this input will give you:

<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th style="text-align: left;">This</th>
<th style="text-align: left;">Is</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: left;">With \</td>
<td style="text-align: left;"></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>Cells</p>

[wlupton]

Thanks. Do you think it's worth stating (in the manual) that the escaped_line_breaks extension isn't supported within pipe table cells?

[jgm]

I think it's implied by the fact that there are no line breaks allowed in pipe table cells.