Blocktree

Back to the basics, Hickey-inspired, generic text parser that spits out an Abstract Syntax Tree that you can operate on.

Example

let str = 'a<1,2,3<hi<cool>>4>hi'

let ast = Tree(str, {
  marker: ',',
  open: '<',
  close: '>',
})

{
  type: 'document',
  children: [
    { type: 'text', value: 'a' },
    {
      type: 'block',
      children: [
        { type: 'text', value: '1' },
        ...
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Concepts

All text operations can be boiled down to 2 concepts: markers & blocks. Here's some examples:

• If you want to insert some text, you'd insert at a marker
• If you want to delete some text, you'd delete a block
• If you want to update or replace some text, you'd swap out a block

Another analogy you can draw is where your cursor is in a document is a marker and when you make a selection, that's a block.

Given markers and blocks, you can implement pretty much anything.

Here's HTML:

let html = '<h2>hi<u>ok</u></h2>'
ast = Tree(html, {
  marker: /<(\w+)\/>/,
  open: /<(\w+)>/,
  close: /<\/(\w+)>/,
})