Placement of colon in relation to square brackets at the beginning of a list

[khalid-hussain]

Greetings, I have a question. It's better if I show you.

I have the following source:

A sample sentence to begin the list.

1. [Test name:]

   This is a sample paragraph.

I run the following command:

pandoc .\pandoc-test.md

To which I get the following:

<p>A sample sentence to begin the list.</p>
<ol type="1">
<li><p>[Test name:]</p>
<p>This is a sample paragraph.</p></li>
</ol>

However, if the colon is placed outside the square brackets, i.e. 1. [Test name]:, I get the following instead:

<p>A sample sentence to begin the list.</p>
<ol type="1">
<li>This is a sample paragraph.</li>
</ol>

I would like to know if this is by design or is it a bug?

[jgm]

By moving the colon you create a reference link definition with empty content.
That's why it doesn't appear in the output. (You could try adding [Test name][] somewhere else and you'll see it turns into a link.