How do I prevent auto-generated links in the GitHub wiki?

Question

On a GitHub wiki page, if I type:

www.foobar.com

GitHub automatically assumes this is a URL and makes the text a hyperlink to http://www.foobar

Answer 1

This isn't limited to wiki page, and is part of the GFM (GitHub Flavored Markdown) url autolinking feature.

Putting them in `` can work but display the url as a code: foo http://example.com bar.

foo `http://example.com` bar

Another trick (mentioned in this gist) is

ht<span>tp://</span>example.com 

That will display http://example.com as regular text.

In your case (without the http://)

w<span>ww.</span>foobar.com

That would also display www.foobar.com as regular text.

geekley adds in the comments:

For emails, you can use foo<span>@</span>example.com

Answer 2

Also, if you are having a issue with something other than a URL auto-linking I found escaping the . works as well.

Example:

foobar.web -> foobar.web

Answer 3

Would suggest to use zero-width no-break space.
In HTML could be used as Unicode char reference:  or 

Benefits are:

• prevents autolinks (obviously)
• invisible
• no unexpected line breaks
• readable in source

Examples

For urls insert between http and :
https​://example.com/ → https​://example.com/

For emails insert after @:
user@example.com → user@example.com

Answer 4

You can use a zero-width space to prevent most auto-linkers from interpreting characters as a URL

Here's an example with a zero width space inserted between https and :

https​://example.com/

To insert one, you can copy from the url above or this page

See also this thread on twitter

Answer 5

You can also just apply a backslash escape to the colon (or any of the other punctuation, apparently), like this:

http\://www.foobar.com