A blog about software by Alexander Yaäkov Garber.

A Modest Start in BASH and NVIM

bash vim scripting
Published on 21 Mar 2020

Instead of using ruby and atom to write a “create post” shell script, I decided to do it in bash and nvim instead. I’m still getting used to the vim keybindings, but it’s actually a lot of fun, and there’s something empowering about learning to interact more directly with the system in bash.

I could have easily written the following script in ruby in a fraction of the time, but in the process I learned a few new tricks in both bash and nvim.

#!/bin/bash

cd ~/Development/publish/clockworkpc.github.io
ymlTemplate=$(cat _front_matter_template.yml)
currentDate=`date`
dateStamp=`date +"%Y"-%m-%d-`
myTitle=$1
myTags=$2

# Generate YAML front matter by sub-string replacement
myYml="${ymlTemplate/MY_TITLE/$myTitle}"
myYml="${myYml/MY_DATE/$currentDate}"
myYml="${myYml/MY_TAGS/$myTags}"

myBasename="${myTitle,,}"
myBasename=`echo $myBasename | sed 's/[^a-zA-Z0-9]/_/g' | sed -e 's/\([_]\)\1\+/\1/g'`

# filePath="`pwd`/_posts/${dateStamp}${myBasename}.md"
filePath="`pwd`/_posts/${dateStamp}${myBasename}.md"

if [[ -z "$myTitle" ]] ; then
  echo "No title provided"
elif [[ -z "$myTags" ]] ; then
  echo "No tags provided"
else
  nvim "${filePath}"
  glow "${filePath}"
  echo -e "${myYml}\n$(cat $filePath)" > $filePath
fi

If you’re wondering, this is the YAML template:

---
layout: post
title:  MY_TITLE
date:   MY_DATE
tags: [MY_TAGS]
---

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