OK, OK, I admit it, I’m anal retentive. (Except when it comes to spelling. 
I looked at the “vB code” help page (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/index.php?action=bbcode) and I have a couple nits to pick, folowed by an actual question.
Nit #1:
Third sentance of first paragraph:
I think you want to omit the word “even”.
Nit #2:
#!/usr/bin/perl
print "Content-type: text/html";
print "Hello World!";
Come on now! Anybody who knows enough to do the “#!” line should also know that the program won’t produce the desired results! Change it to:
#!/usr/bin/perl
print "Content-type: text/plain
";
print "Hello World!
";
Actual Question:
I just did a “Preview Reply” and saw that the vb codes in the above code fragments were interpreted … i.e. the control words in square brackets were removed and the appropriate HTML was inserted in its place. This is obviously the appropriate thing for the bbs software to do.
My question is, what if I actually want the control to appear in my post un-molested? In HTML, I would escape out the less-than and greater-than signs:
<CODE>
Is there a way of doing the same thing in vB? Alternatively, is there a way of disabling vB in a post? I guess one work-around would be to include spaces:
[ CODE ]#!/usr/bin/perl
print "Content-type: text/ugly
";
[ /CODE ]