Convert Markdown Links to WikiLinks

markdown-links-to-wikilinks.sh

#!/bin/bash

: '
Context: Trying to use VimWiki in conjuction with Obsidian. Markdown links
are frequently interpreted as broken in Obsidian so Im switching back to
WikiLinks. This script successfully converted nearly all markdown links in a
modestly sized wiki
'

: '
The Reggies:
The grep and sed reggies are pretty much the same, so Ill focus on the sed one:

Matching:
\[          inside of bracket literals
  (         capture...
    [^[]+   one or more of any character that is not [ (to prevent greedy
            matching when there is more than one link on a line)
  )
\]
\(          inside of paren literals
  (         capture...
    [^[):]+  one or more of any char that is not [ or ) or :
            (prevent greedy...etc and also naively ignore actual urls)
  )
\)

Replacement
[[     Inside of double bracket literals,
  \2   Insert the secord capture group (the actual link)
  |    Pipe literal
  \1   Insert the first capture group (the description)
]]
'


egrep -lZr '\[[^\[]+\]\([^\[]+\)' \
    | xargs --null \
       sed -i -r 's,\[([^[]+)\]\(([^[):]+)\),[[\2|\1]],g'