Syntax highlighting markdown code blocks in Jekyll (without using liquid tags)

syntax-highlighting markdown jekyll redcarpet
markquezada picture markquezada · Dec 27, 2011 · Viewed 43.4k times · Source

It seems like syntax highlighting in Jekyll is limited to using liquid tags and pygments like so:

{% highlight bash %}
cd ~
{% endhighlight %}

But I've imported my existing blog from wordpress and it was written in markdown (using markdown code blocks) and I don't want to have to go through each post and fix the code blocks. Also, I want to keep my posts in pure markdown format in case I ever need to switch blogging platforms again.

I switched my Jekyll parser to redcarpet with the hope that I could use this markdown syntax:

```bash
cd ~
```

But it doesn't seem to work. It just wraps it in a normal code block. Any ideas?

Answer

Steven Penny picture Steven Penny · Feb 20, 2012

Fenced blocks were introduced with Redcarpet 2. Jekyll now supports Redcarpet 2.

As an aside I am using Redcarpet with Rouge until Kramdown support is available.

In addition some people prefer Nanoc to Jekyll.

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