Hello there,
Have you ever wondered the difference between README.txt and README.md? or perhaps you haven't even noticed? Hopefully, this article will give you a clear understanding of both of them. Let's jump right in!
What is a README?
README is an introductory text file in a Github project repository usually displayed at the bottom of the page. It often contains instructions or documentation about the software or code, sometimes it contains information about the other files in the repository. The computer may not how to open a README file without an extension( that is either .txt or .md) hence the need to properly attach an extension to your README file.
Moving on to the difference between README.txt and README.md...
What is README.md?
README.md is is a text file used by Github to generate the HTML summary you see at the bottom of the page in your project repository.
The .md extension stands for Markdown. Simply put, Markdown is just regular text with non-alphabetical characters that tells the browser how the text should be presented without the use of any HTML tags. You can use markdown to format virtually any text document into a heading, table, list, images, etc or to change the appearance of a text to bold, italic, underlining etc.
For instance, to make a phrase bold in Markdown, you add two asterisks before and after it.
**This is a bold sentence**
To know more about Markdown, click HERE
What is README.txt?
README.txt is also a text file in a Github repository but it doesn’t allow any form of formatting in the text document, such as headings, sub-headings, bold, italics, underlining, lists, etc The .txt stands for text and the text is displayed exactly as it is written. When writing a README.txt, you should separate important pieces of information with blank lines, instead of having all the information in one long paragraph.
Note: README.md is preferred because it is nicely formatted and easier to read.
I hope you found this article helpful, you can find me on twitter if you have any question.
See you soon.