rust-lang / rust-lang/mdBook

Allow set based indexing for including lines from files

Open
#2,319 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

C-enhancement
Dominant language
Rust
Stars
22.2k
Forks
1.9k
PR merge metrics
PR metrics pending

Description

Problem

Given

Lines 304 to 305 of file foo can be included in code-block using the following syntax

{{#include foo:304:305}}

Issue

The above format is less terse when including multiple lines from the same file e.g.,

{{#include foo:304:305}}
{{#include foo:307}}
{{#include foo:309:318}}
Proposed Solution

Use , to specify multiple ranges at once e.g.,

{{#include foo:304:305,307,309:318}}

Use +/- to perform operations on ranges e.g.,

{{#include foo:304:318-[306,308]}}

In BNF form, this translates to:

arg := index | '::' index | index ':' | index ':' index 
factor := '-' | '+'
bracketedList := '[' argList ']' 
argList := arg | arg ',' argList | rangeExpression
rangeExpression := bracketedList factor bracketedList | arg factor bracketedList | arg factor arg
Notes

No response

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Begin by locating the existing parser and tests for #include line ranges; the issue names no file or test path. Use the examples and BNF as the behavior to verify, including comma-separated ranges and +/- expressions. Done means the proposed syntax works for the shown cases and existing range behavior remains intact.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
rust
Domain
documentation
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.