reStructuredText is sometimes abbreviated as RST; while sometimes abbreviated as ReST, this can create confusion with REST, an unrelated technology.

The reference parser is implemented as a component of the Docutils text processing framework in the Python programming language, but other parsers are available. It was a re-implementation and extension of the StructuredText and Setext lightweight markup systems, and was meant in particular to address the Problems with StructuredText

reStructuredText is commonly used for technical documentation, for example, in documentation of Python libraries. However, reStructuredText is suitable for a wide range of texts.

Examples of markup

Headers:

Section Header

==============

Subsection Header

-----------------

Lists:

- A bullet list item

- Second item

  - A sub item

- Third item

1) An enumerated list item

2) Second item

   a) Sub item

      i) Sub-sub item

3) Third item

Named links:

A sentence with links to Wikipedia_ and the `Linux kernel archive`_.

.. _Wikipedia: http://www.wikipedia.org/

.. _Linux kernel archive: http://www.kernel.org/

Anonymous links:

Another sentence with an `anonymous link to the Python website`__.

__ http://www.python.org/

See also

• List of lightweight markup languages

References and External links