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Markdown escape

I tried to display original code: $\sim$ in my jupyter notebook.

I thought that $ can be eacaped in the beginning time, so I used \$\sim\$, it displayed ~ later.

Then I tried \\$\sim$, it displayed $\sim$.

Then I found information that $ can not be escaped on the Internet. Why did it happen?

If $ can not be/be escaped, then \$\sim\$ should be \$\sim\$ / $\sim$ ?

then \\$\sim$ should be \~ / \~ ?

Answer*

There are two different processes involved in the output you are producing: first is the Markdown processing that formats the text of the page, and second is the MathJax processing that typesets the mathematics. You have to be aware of how these two interact, as they both use `\` in different ways.

The Markdown engine uses `\` to prevent the following character from having its usual Markdown meaning (that is, it "escapes" it) after which the `\` is removed. For example, because `*` can be used to italicize in Markdown, where `an *italic* word` usually produces "an *italic* word", you can use `not an \*italic\* word` to get "not an \*italic\* word".

So when you do `\$`, Markdown produces `$` in its output. This is done *before* MathJax runs to typeset the math, so it sees the `$` as a math delimiter and processes it. But Markdown only removes the `\` when the following character has a special meaning in Markdown, so since `s` has no special meaning in markdown, `\s` remains `\s`. Thus `\$\sim$` become `$\sim$` the after Markdown processing, and so MathJax sees this as math to be typeset, and produces `~` as you are seeing.

In order to prevent MathJax from seeing the dollar signs as math delimiters, Markdown would need to produce `\$\sim\$` as its output, since MathJax also uses `\` to escape the math delimiters. But since it is a separate process from the Markdown processing, you need to make sure the `\` before the dollar signs is generated in the Markdown output so that MathJax will receive it. To do that, you need to escape those escape characters. So `\\$\sim\\$` would produce `\$\sim\$` in the output before MathJax runs, and then MathJax will see the `\$` as escaping the math delimiters and produce `$\sim$` as its output rather than typesetting it as math.

An alternative that avoids the double escaping is to use `<span>$</span>\sim<span>$</span>`. Markdown will pass this through to the page unchanged, and then MathJax will not see the dollar signs as math delimiters, since they are not within the same HTML element, and the browser will show this as `$\sim$`.

So there are several ways to get the result you are looking for. See the section on [Interatcion with Content Management Systems](https://docs.mathjax.org/en/latest/input/tex/html.html#interactions-with-content-management-systems) in the MathJax documentation for more details.

> Then I found information that $ can not be escaped on the Internet.

You don't cite your source for this, but either it is wrong or you have misunderstood it. Not everything you find on the internet is true. :^)

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Markdown escape

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