How to remove YAML frontmatter from markdown files? - text-processing

Question

I have markdown files that contain YAML frontmatter metadata, like this:
---
title: Something Somethingelse
author: Somebody Sometheson
---
But the YAML is of varying widths. Can I use a Posix command like sed to remove that frontmatter when it's at the beginning of a file? Something that just removes everything between --- and ---, inclusive, but also ignores the rest of the file, in case there are ---s elsewhere.

Answer 1

I understand your question to mean that you want to remove the first ----enclosed block if it starts at the first line. In that case,
sed '1 { /^---/ { :a N; /\n---/! ba; d} }' filename
This is:
1 { # in the first line
/^---/ { # if it starts with ---
:a # jump label for looping
N # fetch the next line, append to pattern space
/\n---/! ba; # if the result does not contain \n--- (that is, if the last
# fetched line does not begin with ---), go back to :a
d # then delete the whole thing.
}
}
# otherwise drop off the end here and do the default (print
# the line)
Depending on how you want to handle lines that begin with ---abc or so, you may have to change the patterns a little (perhaps add $ at the end to only match when the whole line is ---). I'm a bit unclear on your precise requirements there.

Answer 2

If you want to remove only the front matter, you could simply run:
sed '1{/^---$/!q;};1,/^---$/d' infile
If the first line doesn't match ---, sed will quit; else it will delete everything from the 1st line up to (and including) the next line matching --- (i.e. the entire front matter).

Answer 3

If you don't mind the "or something" being perl.
Simply print after two instances of "---" have been found:
perl -ne 'if ($i > 1) { print } else { /^---/ && $i++ }' yaml
or a bit shorter if you don't mind abusing ?: for flow control:
perl -ne '$i > 1 ? print : /^---/ && $i++' yaml
Be sure to include -i if you want to replace inline.

Answer 4

you use a bash file, create script.sh and make it executable using chmod +x script.sh and run it ./script.sh.
#!/bin/bash
#folder articles contains a lot of markdown files
files=./articles/*.md
for f in $files;
do
#filename
echo "${f##*/}"
#replace frontmatter title attribute to "title"
sed -i -r 's/^title: (.*)$/title: "\1"/' $f
#...
done

Answer 5

This AWK based solution works for files with and without FrontMatter, doing nothing in the later case.
#!/bin/sh
# Strips YAML FrontMattter from a file (usually Markdown).
# Exit immediately on each error and unset variable;
# see: https://vaneyckt.io/posts/safer_bash_scripts_with_set_euxo_pipefail/
set -Ee
print_help() {
echo "Strips YAML FrontMattter from a file (usually Markdown)."
echo
echo "Usage:"
echo " `basename $0` -h"
echo " `basename $0` --help"
echo " `basename $0` -i <file-with-front-matter>"
echo " `basename $0` --in-place <file-with-front-matter>"
echo " `basename $0` <file-with-front-matter> <file-to-be-without-front-matter>"
}
replace=false
in_file="-"
out_file="/dev/stdout"
if [ -n "$1" ]
then
if [ "$1" = "-h" ] || [ "$1" = "--help" ]
then
print_help
exit 0
elif [ "$1" = "-i" ] || [ "$1" = "--in-place" ]
then
replace=true
in_file="$2"
out_file="$in_file"
else
in_file="$1"
if [ -n "$2" ]
then
out_file="$2"
fi
fi
fi
tmp_out_file="$out_file"
if $replace
then
tmp_out_file="${in_file}_tmp"
fi
awk -e '
BEGIN {
is_first_line=1;
in_fm=0;
}
/^---$/ {
if (is_first_line) {
in_fm=1;
}
}
{
if (! in_fm) {
print $0;
}
}
/^(---|...)$/ {
if (! is_first_line) {
in_fm=0;
}
is_first_line=0;
}
' "$in_file" >> "$tmp_out_file"
if $replace
then
mv "$tmp_out_file" "$out_file"
fi