I've been using the following pattern for a while now, it greatly simplifies writing cross-referencing explanations or links.

example

whenever we need to cross reference an explanation, we can use this pattern:
the explanation goes in 1 place, with a GUID-like pattern suffixed with :here:

# D20210217T221607:here explanation goes here

each time we need to reference the explanation, we can then just use:

# see D20210217T221607

and likewise each time we need to refer to that explanation:

# see D20210217T221607

benefit

• DRY: avoids repeating an explanation in several places, so we don't need to sync those
• unique and immutable: the GUID-like pattern is (for all practical purposes) guaranteed to be unique, and easily recognizable so users won't change the pattern once it's generated; whereas if a label was used instead, it'd be more likely to be changed, thus breaking the cross-referencing
• machine & human friendly: the fixed pattern used is easily recognizable and can be exploited by tooling, for example a jump to definition which given D20210217T221607 jumps to the place where D20210217T221607:here is defined
• the GUID-like pattern can be generated by tooling (I can share the nim or python code that generates these based on current time)

links

datestring2