markdown parser note

notes/3-markdown-parser/note.md

@@ -0,0 +1,37 @@
+# Markdown parser
+
+_2023-09-16_
+
+While traveling today i thought about ways to structure my markdown parser.
+
+What I want is a function that takes a string containing markdown formatted text and outputs a string of html elements.
+
+My plan is to solve this using a markdown line feed and symbol classes representing the different possible elements.
+These symbols are for example headings, list items, code snippets, paragraphs and links.
+Each symbol will know how to render itself as well as being able to tell if it's the right symbol for the current line feed line.
+
+Lets say we have a markdown file that looks something like this:
+
+```
+# Release notes
+
+Release 1.0.0 contains the following changes:
+- We're now able to properly render markdown as html.
+
+```
+
+The line feed consists out of the lines above and can be read one line at a time.
+We're ignoring the complexity of recursivly parsing symbols due to nesting for now.
+We know that the parsing is complete when the line feed is empty.
+
+We take the first line `# Release notes`.
+We iterate through our list of symbols asking them if they're interested in this line.
+We arrive at the heading symbol, which identifies the "#" and says yes, we stop the iteration.
+
+We pass the first line to the symbol, alongside the line feed.
+The symbol can now decide if it's happy with the one line it claimed or if it wants to continue reading from the line feed.
+Symbols can peek at the line feed, the line is not removed unless it is claimed by the symbol.
+In this case the heading is a single line symbol, so the symbol strips the line that it claimed from the "#" heading syntax and saves the rest to render as a heading later.
+The static symbol instance now returns an instance of a header symbol which we can save to a list for later rendering.
+
+Calling render on a symbol should result in a html string composed of itself plus any child symbols recursivly.