lowdown_buf(3)

lowdown_buf3

Parse a markdown buffer into formatted output

Usage

#include <sys/queue.h>

#include <stdio.h>

#include <lowdown.h>

int

lowdown_buf(const struct lowdown_opts *opts, const char *buf, size_t bufsz, char **ret, size_t *retsz, struct lowdown_metaq *metaq);

Library

library “liblowdown”

Overview

Parses a lowdown(5) buffer buf of size bufsz into an output buffer ret of size retsz according to a configuration opts. The output format is specified by opts->type. If LOWDOWN_METADATA is set in opts->feat and metaq is not NULL, metaq is filled with metadata rendered in the given output format.

The caller is responsible for freeing ret and metaq.

Return values

Returns zero on failure, non-zero on success. On failure, the values pointed to by res and rsz are undefined.

Examples

The following parses standard input into a standalone HTML5 document. It enables footnotes, autolinks, tables, superscript, strikethrough, fenced codeblocks, commonmark, definition lists, extended image attributes, and metadata processing. The output passes through raw HTML and has smart typography.

struct lowdown_opts opts;
char *buf = NULL, *obuf;
char rbuf[1024];
size_t sz, bufsz = 0, obufsz;
while (!(feof(stdin) || ferror(stdin))) {
	sz = fread(rbuf, 1, sizeof(rbuf), stdin);
	if (sz == 0)
		err(1, "fread");
	buf = realloc(buf, bufsz + sz);
	if (buf == NULL)
		err(1, NULL);
	memcpy(buf + bufsz, rbuf, sz);
	bufsz += sz;
}
if (ferror(stdin))
	err(1, "fread");
memset(&opts, 0, sizeof(struct lowdown_opts));
opts.type = LOWDOWN_HTML;
opts.feat = LOWDOWN_FOOTNOTES |
	LOWDOWN_AUTOLINK |
	LOWDOWN_TABLES |
	LOWDOWN_SUPER |
	LOWDOWN_STRIKE |
	LOWDOWN_FENCED |
	LOWDOWN_COMMONMARK |
	LOWDOWN_DEFLIST |
	LOWDOWN_IMG_EXT |
	LOWDOWN_METADATA;
opts.oflags = LOWDOWN_HTML_HEAD_IDS |
	LOWDOWN_HTML_NUM_ENT |
	LOWDOWN_HTML_OWASP |
	LOWDOWN_SMARTY |
	LOWDOWN_STANDALONE;
if (!lowdown_buf(&opts, buf, bufsz, &obuf, &obufsz, NULL))
	errx(1, "lowdown_buf");
fwrite(buf, 1, bufsz, stdout);
free(buf);
free(obuf);

Releases

4 releases since Debian 11 (Bullseye); the text changed 2 times.

  1. 11
  2. 12
  3. 13–Arch

From lowdown 3.2.1-1 in Arch Linux 2026-11-01. Parsed by carta from the page's mdoc source.