stringify() appears to mishandle reference links with inline code

[Trott]

Initial checklist

• I read the support docs
• I read the contributing guide
• I agree to follow the code of conduct
• I searched issues and couldn’t find anything (or linked relevant results below)

Affected packages and versions

remark-stringify@10.0.0

Link to runnable example

No response

Steps to reproduce

import {unified} from 'unified'
import remarkParse from 'remark-parse'
import remarkStringify from 'remark-stringify'

const u = unified()

const input = '[`foo`][]\n\n[`foo`]: http://example.com/'

const ast = u()
  .use(remarkParse)
  .parse(input)

const output = u()
  .use(remarkStringify)
  .stringify(ast)

if (input !== output) {
  console.log(`INPUT: ${input}`)
  console.log(`OUTPUT: ${output}`)
  console.log(`AST: ${JSON.stringify(ast, null, 1)}`)
}

Expected behavior

I would expect the link on the first line of the input/output to either be left as it is in the input, or else converted to [`foo`][`foo`].

Actual behavior

The output breaks the reference link on the first line by changing it from [`foo`][] to [`foo`][foo].

Runtime

Node v16

Package manager

npm v7

OS

macOS

Build and bundle tools

No response

[wooorm]

What does it break though? Other than being different?

[Trott]

The link is broken by the transformation (unless I'm misunderstanding something?). Here's the document input:

[`foo`][]

[`foo`]: http://example.com/

A typical markdown-to-HTML tool might render like this:

<p><a href="http://example.com/"><code>foo</code></a></p>

However, after being run through parse() and then stringify(), we have this:

[`foo`][foo]

[`foo`]: http://example.com/

The link is now broken because it no longer matches the reference at the bottom. A typical markdown-to-HTML tool might render it like this:

<p>[<code>foo</code>][foo]</p>

No link anymore and the brackets are all being included as part of the paragraph text.

[Trott]

Looks like the behavior is present in the underlying mdast-util-to-markdown and/or mdast-util-from-markdown. Should I close this and move the issue there instead?

[Trott]

mdast-util-from-markdown seems to generate the wrong label for the link, if I'm understanding it correctly.