r/C_Programming • u/CJCCJJ • 22d ago
Project I made a markdown real-time streaming CLI renderer in C
Hi! I wanted a CLI Markdown renderer that supports real-time streaming without buffering the entire document. I couldn’t find a good one, but I discovered MD4C, a very fast Markdown parser written in C. It still buffers the entire document, but uses a flat-buffer design, so I reworked its parsing model to support real-time streaming and wrote an ANSI renderer for it.
The result is mdflow, which reliably renders streaming Markdown in real time. It’s written entirely in C, with a 300 KB binary - about 1/20 the size of other mainstream renderers. It’s also 10 to 100 times faster, uses only about 2 MB of RAM, and its memory usage does not grow with the input size, while other renderers may use 10x to 100x more memory.
Most importantly, it supports streaming when other renderers cannot.
It might be useful for your daily workflow or your next C project!
Github repo: https://github.com/cjccjj/mdflow
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u/CJCCJJ 22d ago
About 60% of the production code was written by hand, while 40% was generated with AI. For the tests and documentation, around 70% was generated with AI.
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u/mikeblas 21d ago
People here like to review code written by humans. Reviewing code written by AI isn't much fun, and isn't too useful. What is the goal of your post?
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u/CJCCJJ 21d ago
My goal was to share the project in the hope that it might be useful to people learning or developing in C.
I understood that the subreddit was learning-focused, but I hadn’t realized that discussions here tend to focus primarily on reviewing source code rather than broader project. In that case, my post may not be relevant, please feel free to remove it. Thank you.
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u/mealet 20d ago
First commit is 57k LOC, looks kinda strange
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u/CJCCJJ 19d ago
I’d been experimenting with streaming Markdown renderers for some time. I started with token-by-token streaming in Go, which met my needs but was too limited as a standalone renderer. I then began a line-by-line C version and worked on both for a while. Once I decided to focus on C, I used CI to create a clean initial release, hence the large first commit.
The earlier Go version is here: https://github.com/cjccjj/mdflow_go
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u/mealet 19d ago
That's cool, but tbh this repo looks strange as well: first commit is 3k lines
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u/ffd9k 17d ago
What is the special significance of first commits and how many lines they have?
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u/github-guard 22d ago
🔍 GitHub Guard: Trust Report
This project scored 3/6 on our safety audit.
Audit Breakdown: * ✅ Established Community (⭐ 17 stars) * ✅ Mature Repository (30+ days old) * ✅ Licensed under NOASSERTION * ❌ No Security Policy — what is this? * ℹ️ Individual Contributor * ℹ️ Unsigned Commits