Thanks for your very helpful report. I have fixed this bug (commit d283f9c864fc4a9ed8ffa4711dda9014b886149b). The fix is available now in the dev version and will be in the next release.
+++ Christian Heller [Jun 25 16 18:24 ]:
Package: pandoc Version: 1.16.0.2~dfsg-1 Severity: normal Dear Maintainer, "What led up to the situation?" Using pandoc to convert a ReStructured Text document to HTML. "What exactly did you do (or not do) that was effective (or ineffective)?" I have a file test.rst that contains this string: `<foo>`_ I run pandoc test.rst > test.html "What was the outcome of this action?" I cat test.html and get this content: <p><a href="foo"></a></p> "What outcome did you expect instead?" I expected test.html to contain something like this: <p><a hef="foo">foo</a></p> I expected this because 1) the RST specification states: "The reference text may also be omitted, in which case the URI will be duplicated for use as the reference text. This is useful for relative URIs where the address or file name is also the desired reference text: See `<a_named_relative_link>`_ or `<an_anonymous_relative_link>`__ for details." (<http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/ref/rst/restructuredtext.html#embedded-uris-and-aliases>) 2) docutils' rst2html (which I don't want to due to other faults of it) actually produces something like this, namely: <p><a class="reference external" href="foo">foo</a></p> -- System Information: Debian Release: 8.5 APT prefers stable APT policy: (990, 'stable'), (500, 'testing-updates'), (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'testing') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Kernel: Linux 3.16.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=, LC_CTYPE= (charmap=UTF-8) (ignored: LC_ALL set to en_US.UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system) Versions of packages pandoc depends on: ii libc6 2.19-18+deb8u4 ii libffi6 3.1-2+b2 ii libgmp10 2:6.0.0+dfsg-6 ii liblua5.1-0 5.1.5-7.1 ii libluajit-5.1-2 2.0.4+dfsg-1 ii libpcre3 2:8.35-3.3+deb8u4 ii libyaml-0-2 0.1.6-3 ii pandoc-data 1.16.0.2~dfsg-1 ii zlib1g 1:1.2.8.dfsg-2+b1 pandoc recommends no packages. Versions of packages pandoc suggests: pn etoolbox <none> pn pandoc-citeproc <none> pn texlive-latex-recommended <none> pn texlive-luatex <none> pn texlive-xetex <none> pn wkhtmltopdf <none> -- no debconf information
