What's the difference between --- (3 hyphens) and - - - (3 hyphens with space between them)?

[nhanjkl]

Continuing the discussion from Horizontal Rule "—" Sometimes Changes Text Size & Offers Folding, etc:

I’m trying to understand the difference between --- and - - - (better understanding of Markdown syntax)

@OskarSwierad

Use - - - for a horizontal rule, --- for a post header.

What is a “post header”? I’ve looked this up but still couldn’t understand what it is or does.

From here

@WhiteNoise

This is part of the markdown spec
it’s different way of defining an h2 header

cat
-

https://babelmark.github.io/?text=%23%23+h2+test h2+test - h2+test — h2+test -----

all of the below is an h2 header

## h2 test

h2 test
-

h2 test
--

h2 test
---

h2 test
----

h2 test
-----

So, beside h2 header does this apply to any other header levels?

[alltagsverstand]

@nhanjkl

So, beside h2 header does this apply to any other header levels?

See here:

Basic Syntax | Markdown Guide

Any number of = will create a h1 header, any number of - a h2 header.

Paragraphs in markdown are separated by blank lines. If you do not add a blank line after any text, the --- will be interpreted as applying to the text above, thus formatting it as h2.

Thus you don’t need spaces between the dashes like - - -. I think by “post header” the author just means “post” in the sense of “after” → using dashes directly after a line in order to format it as a header.