OthersHexo

How to parse markdown file with images to hexo asset_img format

In Hexo doc about asset folders, it shows two ways to insert image. One way is put images into one foler, like images and use them through ![This is title](/images/image.jpg). Another way is seperate images in each folder for each post. I think this is better for management and update, and we don’t need to pay much attention on image file names. In short words, when we enable post_asset_folder: true, then when we create post, there’s also created the same name folder to save images. We can use like {% asset_img image.jpg This is title %}.

What if I edit the markdown out of Hexo scope, we can only use ![This is title](/images/image.jpg) to show to others. But when I want to post my article on Hexo site, I have edit the content of each image format, which is tedious. So the thing becomes clear. I need to change

1
2
3
1. This is some content
![](directory/regist.png)
2. This is some other content ![This is title](directory (contains bracket)/user_registered.png)

into

1
2
3
1. This is some content
{% asset_img regist.png %}
2. This is some other content {% asset_img user_registered.png This is title %}

First, I don’t want to use advanced programing language. I just need a simple command to finish it. So sed can search and replace content in file.

Second, I need to get file name in ![This is title](directory (contains bracket)/image.jpg), ignore directory name and parse file name into {% asset_img image.jpg %}.

Let’s seperate ![This is title](directory (contains bracket)/image.jpg) into parts: There’s a ! in front, and append[], and we need content in [] to be as title, then goes (), and always a / in (). It’s like ![](a/b), besides, a might contain bracket, because post title might contain bracket.

  • ! matches the character ! literally
  • \[ matches the character [ literally
  • We need content inside [], which is , we need content in front of ]. So it should be: ([^]]*). (Explaination: () in regex means group, we can use the content in the group with \1, \2 etc. [abc] means single character a, b, c. [^abc] means a character except a, b, c. * means matches 0 or more times.) So ([^]]*) means we want the content as group 1, which the content should not contain ].
    So right now, !\[([^]]*), we have matched ![This is title. Let’s continue.
  • ] matches the character ] literally
  • \( matches the character ( literally
  • We want to skip content before /, vice versa, we accept the characters which are not /, so it should be: [^\/]*.
  • \/ matches the character / literally
    So right now, !\[([^]]*)]\([^\/]*\/, we have matched ![This is title](directory (contains bracket)/. Let’s continue.
  • We want to keep file name, the content after /, in front of ), which means the content should not contain ). So we need ([^)]*), the content is kept as group 2.
  • In the end, we add \), matches the character ).
    So the regex is : !\[([^]]*)]\([^\/]*\/([^)]*)\).

But sed uses Basic Regular Expressions (BRE) by default, which uses \( and \) for group capturing, not just ( and ) as used in Extended Regular Expressions (ERE). So you should be careful when treating ( and ). If you want to match ( literally in sed, just use (. If you need group, use \(. This is not good as we need to change the regex we created, it might cause mistakes. Good news is sed has a parameter -E to use Extended Regular Expressions.

The syntax is:

1
sed -E -i.bak 's/!\[([^]]*)]\([^\/]*\/([^)]*)\)/{% asset_img \2 \1 %}/g' file

or

1
sed -i.bak 's/!\[\([^]]*\)]([^\/]*\/\([^)]*\))/{% asset_img \2 \1 %}/g' file
  • -i.bak will backup original file into file.bak.
  • 's/old-text/new-text/g', s is the substitute command of set for find and replace.
  • group 1 is ([^]]*), group 2 is ([^)]*)

So above command means find old-text and replace file content with new-text, also backup fileinto file.bak.

And here is online expression with example.

[1]nixCraft - How to use sed to find and replace text in files in Linux / Unix shell

[2]Stackoverflow - How to extract string in file and replace specific pattern text

[3]Stackoverflow - Sed error “\1 not defined in the RE” on MacOSX 10.9.5

[4]Stackoverflow - .bash_profile sed: \1 not defined in the RE

Share