I want to use code blocks in markdown and enable code highlighting. At the same time, I often want to override the formatting of certain parts of the block to pay attention to it.

For example, I have this tag:

```bash
var="Hello World"
# print it 
echo "$var"
# Another way of printing it
printf "%s\n" "$var"
```

This gives me this highlight:

var="Hello World"
# print it 
echo "$var"
# Another way of printing it
printf "%s\n" "$var"

Now, let's say I want to focus on %s. I want it to be bold (or red, or some other background color, it doesn't matter).

But I don't see this possibility. There are many similar questions, such as this one. But my problem is not that the highlight is lost. I want to keep it.

I'd even be happy to see any hack, maybe something like this:

<pre>
<code class="language-bash">var="Hello World"
# print it 
echo "$var"
# Another way of printing it
printf "</code></pre>**%s**<pre><code class="language-bash">\n" "$var"
</code></pre>

But unfortunately it doesn't work.

Perhaps there is a way to apply highlighting to random pieces of text? I mean, there is no need to put it in a block as that will prevent me from writing further on the same line (i.e. %s is on the next line).

Perhaps markdown should be extended to support rewriting like this:

```bash
var="Hello World"
# print it 
echo "$var"
# Another way of printing it
printf "```**%s**```\n" "$var"
```

Currently it is just ignored:

var="Hello World"
# print it 
echo "$var"
# Another way of printing it
printf "```**%s**```\n" "$var"