Stack Overflow won't let me post code, I don't have proper "formatting"?

Question

I was trying to answer a coding question in Java. I had some code and used <pre><code>, put my code in, then typed </pre></code>. I then came across this error when trying to post:

Oops! Your edit couldn't be submitted because:

Your post appears to contain code that is not properly formatted as code. Please indent all code by 4 spaces using the code toolbar button or the CTRL+K keyboard shortcut. For more editing help, click the [?] toolbar icon.

It is properly formatted (at least by the preview it is), so how can I fix this? I'm new to Stack Overflow formatting.

Answer 1

Markdown automatically formats such lines (those that start with four spaces) as code. When pasting code, you can have it automatically formatted for you by clicking on the button. Alternatively, you can put the four spaces in front of the code lines yourself. As a result, your code looks like this:

    class Something{
        int i;
        public void DoSomething(){
            //some code here
        }
    }

You also have to make sure that you leave at least one blank line between your statements/paragraphs and your code to ensure the code gets detected and formatted properly.

The alternative is to wrap the code in <pre><code> tags. Formatting of raw HTML can be sometimes terse so you'll have to make sure you close the tags in reverse to the order you opened them. In other words, open and close tags like so:

<pre><code>
class Something{
    int i;
    public void DoSomething(){
        //some code here
    }
}
</code></pre>

If you interchange the position of the closing tags, it is possible that markdown will not format your code properly or sometimes it will not be formatted as code at all!

Answer 2

If you have any headings in your post, this could also be the case the warning is (wrongly) shown.

As proposed in this answer, you should make sure there is an empty line after each heading.

Answer 3

Excuse me for repeating message you've just cited, but didn't system tell you plain and clear:

Please indent all code by 4 spaces using the code toolbar button or the CTRL+K keyboard shortcut.

If you do just that, you'll get your code in and it will even get automatically highlighted.