Org mode link syntax question

[OmegaTwiddle]

I think that when converting from HTML to org mode, a blank anchor text should translate into an org mode link without any description. Here is an example command / output / expected output.

Command
pandoc -f html -t org <(echo "<h1>Test</h1><a href='http://example.com'></a>")

Actual Output

* Test
:PROPERTIES:
:CUSTOM_ID: test
:END:
[[http://example.com][]]

Expected Output

* Test
:PROPERTIES:
:CUSTOM_ID: test
:END:
[[http://example.com]]

I was building a tool to convert html to org mode, and encountered a minor bug in org mode, which was reported and fixed. In the response, the maintainer confirmed that a description includes "one or more objects enclosed by square brackets". From the response, I believe the link format should be either including a brackets-enclosed description from the anchor text, or should not include empty brackets if there is no anchor text.

[tarleb]

I think the closest representation would be [[https://example.com][​]], where the description is a ZERO WIDTH SPACE character.

Feel free to open a new issue for this.

[OmegaTwiddle]

Hmmm interesting, is there a specific reason why it cannot remove the description brackets when the anchor text is null / empty string? Honestly I'd probably prefer blank to the ZERO WIDTH SPACE character, even if it's technically slightly incorrect syntax.

Note from the org-mode docs, the description is optional, so it is valid to output a link of the form [[http://example.com]].

[tarleb]

Org mode converts [[https://example.com]] to <a href="https://example.com">https://example.com</a>, which is very different from the original input.