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Asked: 2026-05-11T17:49:47+00:00

What is the best implementation of Markdown for C or C++? I found these

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What is the best implementation of Markdown for C or C++?

I found these via Google, and would appreciate comments about which ones work well and which ones don’t (and which ones I may have missed):

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  1. Editorial Team

    1. peg-markdown depends on GLib and other 3rd part tools. I’ve tested it, it works quite well.

      Advantages:

      • Dual-licensed under GPL and MIT.
      • Uses internally formal grammar, so easy to maintain and extend.

      Disadvantages:

      • Depends on GLib
      • Provides C API.

    2. Cpp-Markdown, Most C++ code but it is quite slow and little bit bloated. On the other hand it is quite easy to understand and modify, Depends on boost-1.35.

      Advantages

      • Depends only on boost
      • Written in C++, looks like less dangerous
      • Licensed under MIT.

      Disadvantages

      • Slow (it is still about 10 times faster then Perl implementation, but about 10 times slower than Discount)

    3. Discount, This is the code I use for my blog http://art-blog.no-ip.info/cppcms/blog and wiki http://art-blog.no-ip.info/wikipp/en/page/main. It is written by hardcore C programmer and quite hardly mantainable (even the developer activly maintains it).

      Advantages

      • Extremely fast
      • Written in pure C (no 3rd part dependencies).
      • Actively maintained
      • Has permissive 3 clause BSD license

      Disadvantages

      • Almost impossible to maintain (even I could remove/add some fatures).
      • Has only FILE API, so I should tweak the code to make it work with general buffer.
      • Licensed under 4 clause BSD license that is incompatible with GPL. It is problematic if you want to use it not as part of your GPL-ed software.

    Why do I know them so much?

    I’m developing CppCMS, so I need a good markdown to HTML convertor. When I picked one (Discount), it was the only solution. Since then I’ve needed to replace it due to licensing issues. That said, I still quite like it because it is the fastest Markdown solution.

    P.S.: If you want C++ wrapper for Discount, take a look on http://cppcms.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cppcms/cms/trunk/cxxmarkdown/, It is not the latest version, but it is already tweaked.

    EDIT: I have just visited Discount site and I had found that it had added a non-FILE API as well. So now it is real library.

    EDIT 2: If you find better implementation or write your own under FOSS license, let me know 😉

    EDIT 3: as cloose commented, discount had changed the license to 3 clause BSD.

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