About
An interactive shell for writing Markdown documents, with
support for embedding bash sub-shells $() in your Markdown!
Usage: mdshell # creates the file if it doesn't exist
Note backtick subshells (``) not supported, only $()
Example: Add $(uname) in your Markdown and the saved
file will contain your system info.
About mdshell
The mdshell script is a part of this blogging software thing I'm making.
Adding dynamic content using mdshell
It lets you create web pages super fast, using Markdown and embedded sub-shells.
The results of the sub-shell commands are included in the final output.
For example, if you write the following in your blog post when using mdshell (removing the space ater the $):
$ (uname)
Then the actual output in the final HTML file will be:
Linux
This is an easy way to embed functions and commands inside your markdown, and to auto-generate your web pages with the results of those commands/functions.
Another example, showing how to list folder contents:
$ (ls $HOME)
Would produce the following final output:
bin
blog_ideas.txt
Choices
colored-completion-prefix
default.jpg
Desktop
Documents
dotfiles
Downloads
File-Sharing
index.md
mdshell.gif
mdshell-opt.gif
mdshell.ttyrecord
network
pkg
puppy_arcade_readme.txt
README.md
Sites
small.md
spot
src
Startup
test1.html
test.md
tree.html
www
(or something like that, depending on what's in your home dir, obviously)
Using HTML in mdshell
The mdshell also lets you write HTML straight into the post, and it will also work fine.
This is useful if Markdown alone cannot produce the custom HTML layouts/elements that you need.
Using python (or whatever) in mdshell
Simply put your code or commands inside a sub-shell as usual..
The following would run a Python script, the results of which would end up in your page HTML:
python /path/to/script.py
You could also call node scripts - for things like server-side chart rendering..
You could, for example, have installed the ChartJS or Chartist node packages which, when called in a sub-shell, would return the charts HTML/SVG.
Summary of mdshell
It's a super easy way to write blog posts in the terminal, using anything from plain Markdown to dynamic shell-based scripts, to plain HTML - or a mix of all of those..
I've yet to work out a more convenient way of writing blog posts that is no-frills, flexible, and "just works".
And best of all, I don't need any extra software AT ALL - just my terminal.
Nice.