What is the difference between README and README.md in GitHub projects?

github markdown
Enrique Moreno Tent picture Enrique Moreno Tent · Dec 28, 2011 · Viewed 299k times · Source

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.

Answer

Mike Pennington picture Mike Pennington · Dec 28, 2011

.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)

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