I've noticed some GitHub projects have not only a README
file, but also a README.md
file.
What is the difference between these files? I know README
serves also as introductory text in the project repository page but I have no idea what README.md
does.
.md is markdown
. README.md
is used to generate the html
summary you see at the bottom of projects. Github has their own flavor of Markdown.
Order of Preference: If you have two files named README
and README.md
, the file named README.md
is preferred, and it will be used to generate github's html
summary.
FWIW, Stack Overflow uses local Markdown modifications as well (also see Stack Overflow's C# Markdown Processor)
.md
stands for markdown and is generated at the bottom of your github page as html.
Typical syntax includes:
Will become a heading
==============
Will become a sub heading
--------------
*This will be Italic*
**This will be Bold**
- This will be a list item
- This will be a list item
Add a indent and this will end up as code
For more details:
http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/
.md
extension stands for Markdown, which Github uses, among others, to format those files.
Read about Markdown:
http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown
Also:
http://github.github.com/github-flavored-markdown/
README.md
or .mkdn
or .markdown
denotes that the file is markdown formatted.
Markdown is a markup language. With it you can easily display headers or have italic words, or bold or almost anything that can be done to text