rst and pypandoc

[Steven D'Aprano]

alb wrote:

> In [39]: print pypandoc.convert(s, 'latex', format='rst')
> this is some restructured text.
> 
> what happened to my backslash???

You'll need to read your pypandoc documentation to see what it says about
backslashes.


> If I try to escape my backslash I get something worse:
> 
> In [40]: f = open('test.txt', 'r')
> 
> In [41]: s = f.read()
> 
> In [42]: print s
> this is \\some restructured text.
> 
> 
> In [43]: print pypandoc.convert(s, 'latex', format='rst')
> this is \textbackslash{}some restructured text.
> 
> since a literal backslash gets converted to a literal latex backslash.

Why is this a problem? Isn't the ultimate aim to pass it through latex,
which will then covert the \textbackslash{} back into a backslash? If not,
I have misunderstood something.

If not, you could do something like this:

s = 'this is %(b)ssome restructured text.'
t = pypandoc.convert(s, 'latex', format='rst')
assert t == 'this is %(b)ssome restructured text.'
print t % {'b': '\\'}


taking care to escape any actual percent signs in your text as '%%'.

To be clear, what I'm doing here is using Python's % string interpolation to
post-process the Latex output:

- replace every '%' in your input string with '%%';
- replace every backslash in your input string with '%(b)s';
- convert;
- post-process using %.



-- 
Steven