mweave

Markdown Weave

What is mw.js?

An experiment in using Markdown and Donald Knuth's literate programming concept.

Bootstraping mw.js

I like the idea of writing mw.js using mw.js. To do that I wrote a very simple implementation of mv.js which I'm calling mw-bootstrap.js. I'm leveraging Markdown syntax via JavaScript to generate the vi commands to extract the code. The source for mw.js will be generate by running mw-bootstrap.js on Markdown-Weave.md.

Here's code to bootstrap this whole thing-

mw-bootstrap.js

    /**
     * mw-bootstrap.js - an experiment in literate style programming in a 
     * markdown file.
     * @author R. S. Doiel, <[e-mail]>
     * copyright (c) 2013 all rights reserved
     * Licensed under the BSD 2-clause license. See http://opensource.org/licenses/BSD-2-Clause
     */
     
     var fs = require("fs"),
        lines = [],
        line = "",
        check = "",
        outputs = {},
        i = 0,
        markdownFilename = "README.md",
        filename,
        start = 0,
        end = 0;

     if (process.argv.length === 3) {
        markdownFilename = process.argv[2];
     }
     lines = fs.readFileSync(markdownFilename).toString().split("\n");
     for (i = 0; i < lines.length; i += 1) {
        line = lines[i];
        check = line.trim();
        if (i < lines.length - 2 &&
            lines[i + 1].indexOf("```") === 0 &&
            check[0] === '[' && check[check.length - 1] === ')') {
            i += 2;
            start = check.lastIndexOf('(') + 1;
            end = check.lastIndexOf(')');
            filename = line.substr(start, end - start);
            console.log("# Output Filename: " + filename);
            outputs[filename] = {start: i + 1, end: -1};
        } else if (typeof outputs[filename] !== "undefined" &&
            outputs[filename].end < 0 &&
            line.indexOf("```") === 0) {
            outputs[filename].end = i;
            filename = "";
        }
     };
     Object.keys(outputs).forEach(function (ky) {
        console.log("# This vi command to generate the code for " + ky);
        console.log("vi -e -c '" + outputs[ky].start + "," + outputs[ky].end + " wq! " + ky + "' " +
            markdownFilename);
        console.log('sed -e "s/    //" -i ' + ky);
     });

Above is the bootstrap code. To "bootstrap" I'm using ex's write lines command to generate the the first instance of mw-bootstrap.js. Then mw-bootstrap.js will be used to process README.md and generate subsequent versions. To discover the filename to write to I'm looking at the line immediately before the tripple quotes and if there is a line then I assume the link target is the desired filename. If there is a blank line before the tripple quotes then I don't write that quoted block out.

Here's the vi command to generate mw-bootstrap.js the first time.

    vi -e -c "20,68wq! mw-bootstrap.js" README.md;node mw-bootstrap.js

Further reading

• Markdown-Weave.md is the source to mw.js and command line tool. Since this is process by mw-bootstrap.js it's not quiet literate yet.
• HelloWorld.md - A simple hello world example.