Allow bold text in inline and block code formatting [duplicate]

Question

I would like to suggest a feature change with text formatting.

There have been several instances where I would like to point out something in someone's code. It would be much easier to do if text within inline and block code could be set to bold to highlight something in particular.

I've noticed other users who have had problems with this sort of thing and I think it would make things a lot easier if this was possible.

Here is one recent example:

jquery.autoNumeric plug-in conflict with jquery.tools

Specifically the answer by David where he says:

Pardon the ugly formatting, not sure the best way to call attention to it in a code block.

Answer 1

You can use a <pre><code>...</code></pre> block instead, and the HTML tags to bold (remembering to escape special characters, though):

<pre><code>function changeMe() {
    console.<del>write</del><b>log</b>('Hello, world!');
}</code></pre>

becomes

function changeMe() {
    console.writelog('Hello, world!');
}

But in regular Markdown? That would seem like a bad idea, considering the multiplication and exponentiation operators in many languages.