title: GitHub MarkDown: Are Macros and Variables possible?
body: <p>I've been learning github markdown, I had a question about variables and macros.</p>
  
  <p>is it possible to define a variable or macro to prevent repeated printing of a block of text? </p>
  
  <p>The use case is that I have a table producing a big grid of hyperlinks - the links look like the below. </p>
  
  <pre><code>http://www.a-big-long-big-big-long-hyperlink/more-long-stuff?id=1234
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>it would be nice if I could do something like the below once:</p>
  
  <pre><code>$link=http://www.a-big-long-big-big-long-hyperlink/more-long-stuff?id
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and then in each cell in the table, I can say something like</p>
  
  <pre><code>$link=1234
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Some other cell</p>
  
  <pre><code>$link=2345
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>the idea being that:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>The table (which has ~10 columns and ~10 rows) is a bit easier to see on a normal screen, at the moment with the prefix to the links being so long, it looks really ugly as the links wrap to the next line</li>
  <li>If I want to change the root link, I can change it in one place (yes, I know I could do search and replace in an editor!)</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Cheers. </p>