# Markaby escapes special chars automatically?!

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/markaby-escapes-special-chars-automatically/135509>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [April 22, 2008, 7:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/markaby-escapes-special-chars-automatically/135509 "2008-04-22T19:27:25Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![josh](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/45deac/32.png) [@josh](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/josh)\
**Post date:** [April 22, 2008, 7:27pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/markaby-escapes-special-chars-automatically/135509/1 "2008-04-22T19:27:25Z")

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Hi all

I’m evaluating Markaby, and stumbled right over the first oddity. When  
using

td link\_to(‘Bla’, :action =\> ‘bla’)

Markaby escapes special chars automatically! So instead of

[Bla](https://www.ruby-forum.com/music/artists/bla)

on my website, I’m getting

\<a href="/music/artists/bla"\>Bla\</a\>

Is there a way to turn this behavior off? I know that I can achieve the  
desired result using

td { link\_to(‘Bla’, :action =\> ‘bla’) }

but I don’t really see too much advantage in this, I want to decide  
myself when I want to escape stuff and when not. So I’d just like to be  
able to use

td link\_to(‘Bla’, :action =\> ‘bla’)

and

td h(link\_to(‘Bla’, :action =\> ‘bla’))

Thanks a lot for help 🙂  
Josh