Guidelines for writing shell prompt code examples

A shell is a program that waits for you to type in a command and then press the return key. To indicate which commands you should type, content on MDN Web Docs lists them in a code block, similar to code examples.

Such a block looks like this:

# This may take a while...
git clone https://github.com/mdn/content
cd content

Opinions on correct indentation, whitespace, and line lengths have always been controversial. Discussions on these topics are a distraction from creating and maintaining content.

On MDN Web Docs, we use Prettier as a code formatter to keep the code style consistent (and to avoid off-topic discussions). You can consult our configuration file to learn about the current rules, and read the Prettier documentation.

Prettier formats all the code and keeps the style consistent. Nevertheless, there are a few additional rules that you need to follow.

When writing a shell code block:

• Do not include a $ or > at the beginning of a shell instruction. It confuses more than it helps and it is not useful when copying the instructions.
• Comments start with #.
• Choose "bash" to indicate the language in markdown.

Django server-side development docs show good practice presentation of shell prompt commands.