GitHub shortcut for formatting code sample

Question

Stack Overflow has a button you can press to indent a block of text four spaces so Markdown will treat it as code. GitHub uses Markdown, too, but does not seem to have formatting buttons.

Does GitHub have a keyboard shortcut or button to indent a block of code, or will I have to copy the code to a text editor, indent it, and paste it back in?

Answer 1

There is no keyboard shortcut to automatically indent a block of code.

You will either have to find a browser extension, like a userscript, or write one yourself. Or just add the four leading spaces as you would now.

You can see a list of current GitHub keyboard shortcuts by Shift + ? and clicking "See all" when on any GitHub page.

Answer 2

GitHub Flavored Markdown supports an alternative syntax for code formatting (notice the backticks):

```
#include <stdio.h>

int main(void)
{
    puts("Hello, world\n");
    return 0;
}
```

This does not require you to indent the code. Another bonus: you can specify the programming language to enable syntax highlighting:

```ruby
require 'redcarpet'
markdown = Redcarpet.new("Hello World!")
puts markdown.to_html
```

Answer 3

Select the lines you want to indent and hit Tab twice. Shift+Tab unindents.