Transform Mardown to Vimwiki format with sed
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Last edited: $Date: 2020/09/05 11:27:23 $
## Vimwiki backlist function not working in Markdown
I started with a first try-out to create a Zettelkasten
with Vimwiki. For this I use a Vimwiki in Markdown
format.
Unfortunately, the `:VWB` function, which creates a
list of backlinks, works only in the original Vimwiki
format.
## Transformation to Vimwiki format
This is my first try-out for a Zettelkasten, so I
don't have many files in it. Therefor, the easiest
solution seems to be to a conversion of the current Vimwiki
Zettelkasten to the original Vimwiki format.
This turned out to be much simpler than it sounds :)
I do use only some simple formatting:
# Top level header
## Second level header
### Second level header
[description](filename)
[description](url)
These formats has to be transformed to the original Vimwiki
format:
= Top level header =
== Second level header =
=== Third level header ===
[[filename|description]]
[[url|description]]
## sed script to do the transformation
As this is not very complicated, I tried to do this
with sed.
People with more sed-fui than I have will probably do
it more efficient, but it works :)
Put this lines in a file, I called it `conversion.sed`
and run this with some shell script to convert all
the files with it to the new format, in a different
directory. Also, the files have to be renamed from
`filename.md` to `filename.wiki`.
I used this as a shell script:
#!/bin/sh
for file in $(ls 0??.md)
do
nieuw="../zettelkasten2/${file%\.md}.wiki"
echo $file $nieuw
cat $file | sed -f conversion.sed > $nieuw
done
My Vimwiki Zettelkasten try-out uses base-36 encoded
filenames, like `00a.md`, `01n.md`, and so on.
So far I have about 75 files in it. That is why in the
script above I use `ls 0??.md`.
My Vimwiki runs in a FreeBSD jail, so this used the
FreeBSD versions of sed and of the shell.
