There is no shortage of curious behaviour in our parser when you look hard enough:

foo

(note the space at left, this is what I call a 'spaceblock' and renders as <pre>foo</foo>)

<pre>foo</pre> (again with space, renders exactly as before - the parser evidently decides the extra <pre> is redundant)

But what about: foo </pre>

Strangely enough, this renders without a <pre> block at all.

Steve