What is the difference between README and README.md in GitHub projects?

Question

I've noticed some GitHub projects have not only a README file, but also a README.md file.

What is the difference between these files? I know README serves also as introductory text in the project repository page but I have no idea what README.md does.

Answer 1

.md is markdown. README.md is used to generate the html summary you see at the bottom of projects. Github has their own flavor of Markdown.

Order of Preference: If you have two files named README and README.md, the file named README.md is preferred, and it will be used to generate github's html summary.

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FWIW, Stack Overflow uses local Markdown modifications as well (also see Stack Overflow's C# Markdown Processor)

Answer 2

.md stands for markdown and is generated at the bottom of your github page as html.

Typical syntax includes:

Will become a heading
==============

Will become a sub heading
--------------

*This will be Italic*

**This will be Bold**

- This will be a list item
- This will be a list item

    Add a indent and this will end up as code

For more details: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/

Answer 3

.md extension stands for Markdown, which Github uses, among others, to format those files.

Read about Markdown:

http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown

Also:

http://github.github.com/github-flavored-markdown/

Answer 4

README.md or .mkdn or .markdown denotes that the file is markdown formatted. Markdown is a markup language. With it you can easily display headers or have italic words, or bold or almost anything that can be done to text