Using MarkDown in Moodle quiz questions with the GIFT format

(Answering my own question) This seems to work:

::Finding bugs:: [markdown] Consider the following code\:\n \n x\=5; \n if x\=5 \n disp("It worked!") \n else \n print('Uh oh!') \n done \n\n\n On which lines do bugs occur? Answer in the form [1,2,3]. { =[2,3,5,6] } 

Note the four spaces between each \n and the code. Ugh.

My Moodle site (v.311) displays the answer from ConvexMartian with extra line breaks between each line:

To get rid of those spurious line breaks (Moodle now seems to interpret both the \n and the line breaks), you can put the code all on one line (which is pretty ugly!), e.g.:

::Finding bugs:: [markdown] Consider the following code\:\n\n x\=5;\n if x\=5\n disp("It worked!")\n else\n print('Uh oh!')\n done\n\n\n On which lines do bugs occur? Answer in the form [1,2,3]. { =[2,3,5,6] } 

The result:

Non-breaking space option with code block

This answer on a Moodle forum mentions you can use non-breaking spaces (instead of indenting) with code block (fence) in markdown. Your problem would look like:

::Finding bugs:: [markdown] Consider the following code: ``` x=5; if x=5 . disp("It worked!") else . print('Uh oh!') done ``` On which lines do bugs occur? Answer in the form [1,2,3]. { =[2,3,5,6] } 

However, the . displayed on lines above (those that are indented) must be a non-breaking space (or indentation will not be respected).

Putting code in answers

It's possible to put code blocks in answers, too (again, using the non-breaking space to preserve indentation).

In this example, GIFT control characters ({ } = : ~) appearing in the source code have to be escaped. Because of that, the source code looks pretty ugly, too (but it works):

::Code blocks in stem and answers :: [markdown] Complete the following TypeScript class so it has a method named `go` that accepts a string argument and always returns true. ``` export class A \{ . // complete \} ``` { = ``` go(a\: string) \{ . return true; \} ``` ~ ``` go(string a) \{ . return true; \} ``` } 

Result:

There are a few smart editors supporting GIFT that will help you escape the special characters in the code. I prefer this VSCode extension for GIFT. Disclaimer: it uses the GIFT grammar/parser I helped develop.