How can I make a table of contents for a markdown document with Python/AWK/SED?

Question

I have the following markdown document:

Heading-a
==========

---text---

Heading-b
------------

--- text ---

Heading-c
----------

--- text---

Heading-d
=======

--- text----

Heading-e
---

...

I would like to make a clickable table of contents out of it, similar to the way LaTex does, but can't find a tool that does this, which suggests to me that we should build one.

The tool should collect 'H1' headings and 'H2' headings such that it assigns the number 1 to Heading-a and the number 1.1. to Heading-b, 1.2. to Heading-c, 2. to Heading-d, 2.1. to Heading-e and so on, such that we should get the following Table of contents:

  1. Heading-a
  1.1. Heading-b
  1.2. Heading-c
  2. Heading-d
  2.1. Heading-e

How can I do this with Python/AWK/SED?

@jtbandes: The syntax of Markdown is easier to read, faster to type and easier to compile than that of LaTex. — Léo Léopold Hertz 준영, Jul 26 '09 at 05:11

score 9 · Accepted Answer · edited Feb 04 '20 at 21:30

9

The Markdown in Python implementation has support for extensions one of which includes Table of Contents generation. Additionally Pandoc (which is a Haskell markup->PDF has support for markdown (in addition to a bunch of other formats) and can output pretty HTML, LaTeX, PDFs, etc.

edited Feb 04 '20 at 21:30

Anthony Geoghegan

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answered Jul 25 '09 at 22:25

Tyler

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Your answer raised another problem in installing the extensions at the thread http://superuser.com/questions/13075/to-install-markdowns-extensions-by-python – Léo Léopold Hertz 준영 Jul 26 '09 at 05:10

score 1 · Answer 2 · edited Oct 24 '15 at 13:33

1

If you already have headings, you can try github-markdown-toc is able to process stdin, local and remote files, for example:

cat ~/projects/Dockerfile.vim/README.md | ./gh-md-toc -

or creating a local README.md:

./gh-md-toc ~/projects/Dockerfile.vim/README.md

edited Oct 24 '15 at 13:33

kenorb

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answered Oct 23 '15 at 01:00

resultsway

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 25 '09 at 22:03

0

See this article for a comparison of lightweight markup languages with some information on tables of contents that might lead you in the direction of a solution.

answered Jul 25 '09 at 22:03

Dennis Williamson

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The link is not working. – Léo Léopold Hertz 준영 Jul 26 '09 at 04:23
2

The link works for me. – Dennis Williamson Jul 26 '09 at 08:44
It seems to be the case that the original author has just removed the blog post such that you have the article in your cache. – Léo Léopold Hertz 준영 Jul 26 '09 at 12:47
1

The article can be found at Google's cache: site:http://alexandrenotebook.blogspot.com/2008/01/textile-vs-markdown-vs-multimarkdown-vs_10.html – Léo Léopold Hertz 준영 Jul 26 '09 at 12:48

How can I make a table of contents for a markdown document with Python/AWK/SED?

3 Answers3