How to escape a '#' so it will NOT reference an issue in a GitHub comment?

Question

As opposed to reference an issue, I want to just output the text #5 without any link. How can I do that?

For example, a shader error message from Unity could contain # and a followed number:

Shader error in 'Nature/Terrain/Standard':
actual parameter #3 must be same type as formal out parameter ("weight")
actual parameter #4 must be same type as formal out parameter ("mixedDiffuse")
actual parameter #5 must be same type as formal out parameter ("mixedNormal")
too many parameters in function call at line 64 (on d3d9)

I have tried \#5 and #5 but they don't work: still linked.

The question doesn't focus on how to escape #, but #5, which will be translated to a link to another issue. That's unexpected.

Does this answer your question? [Escape pound or number sign in Github issue tracker](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20532546/escape-pound-or-number-sign-in-github-issue-tracker) — ivan_pozdeev, Mar 18 '22 at 04:48

score 10 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 23 '18 at 06:11

10

You could put an invisible character between the # and the number.

e.g.

#5 will be rendered as #5 on GitHub.

 being the unicode "zero width space" character.

answered Sep 23 '18 at 06:11

shim

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That's a clever idea! :D – zwcloud Sep 23 '18 at 06:21
An invisible character will be picked up by cut-and-paste, which is not desirable. An alternative is to write `#5`. – mernst Jul 17 '23 at 23:52
You should add this as a separate answer – shim Jul 17 '23 at 23:57

How to escape a '#' so it will NOT reference an issue in a GitHub comment?

1 Answers1

Linked