Illiterate

Extract code block from markdown à la coffeescript - but for any language.

Usage

illiterate file.js.md > file.js

After being processed by illiterate, this readme file contains only the indented javascript code blocks. The output can be seen in bin/illiterate.js.

Build

There is no real build process to speak of. I tend to do something like...

./bin/illiterate readme.md > temp && rm bin/illiterate.js && mv temp bin/illiterate.js

(temp file is used to prevent issues with overwriting currently executing file)

Source

This file is the documentation, and also is itself the source for a binary which is capable of compiling itself. Anything in this file which is indented is interpreted by markdown as code, and ends up in the compiled output.

Initialize environment

Create a variable to store output as it is built up from input files

var out = [];

Main loop

Loop through each input file (specified as command line arguments)

process.argv.slice(2).forEach(function(filename){

Read each file, and loop through each line

	require('fs').readFileSync(filename).toString().split(/\r?\n/).forEach(function(line){

If the line starts with a tab or four spaces, strip it out and include the line in the output

		['    ', '\t'].forEach(function(delimiter){
			if(line.indexOf(delimiter) === 0){
				out.push(line.substring(delimiter.length));
			}
		});

	});

});

Output

Finally, output all lines

console.log(out.join('\n'));