Prevent automatic hyperlink in reStructuredText

Question

reStructuredText automatically creates a hyperlink when it sees a URL like https://stackoverflow.com/

Is there a way to prevent this from happening? I just want the link to be in plain-text, no hyperlink.

I know this is easily done in HTML but I am looking for a reST solution.

Answer 1

With a backslash in front of the URL, it is rendered as plain text:

Go to \http://stackoverflow.com

This works with rst2html.py (from Docutils) and with Sphinx.