This is my first attempt to create a Perl script.

This script is to convert Markdown files to plain text ones, with some "common" typographic substitutions.

When I finish it, it is assumed to work as follows:

1. Single-hyphen dashes are replaced with three hyphens: that is, foo - bar is replaced with foo---bar
2. Markdown-style italic is replaced with Org Mode-style italic: that is, foo *bar* baz is replaced with foo /bar/ baz
3. Blank lines are replaced with first-line indents, that is:
   ``` FROM THIS This is a 500-character line of text.

   This is another 500-character line of text. ```

   TO THIS This is a 500-character line of text. This is another 500- character line of text.

4. Lines are hard-wrapped at 72 characters, and additionally:
5. Any single-letter word, such as "a" or "I", if it happened to be at the end of a hard-wrapped line, unless it is the last word in a paragraph, is moved to the next hard-wrapped line, that is:
   FROM THIS He knows that I love bananas.

   TO THIS He knows that I love bananas.

And now the first draft. Please don't laugh too loudly 😀

```

!/usr/bin/perl

perl -pi -e 's/ - /---/g' $1 # foo - bar to foo---bar perl -pi -e 's/*///g' $1 # foo to /foo/ perl -pi -e 's/\n{2}/\n /g' $1 # blank lines to first-line indents ```

The first two lines work fine.

But I really don't understand why the third line doesn't replace blank lines with first-line indents.

Also, maybe someone can point me to an existing Perl or Awk script that does all of this.

submitted by /u/No-Usual-9631
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This is not Perl specific, but in our new era of this Perl economy everyone should be thinking about side-hustles and income streams. Perl is perfect for creating SaaS and other services because for efficient practitioners it presents the most efficient way to prototype a lot of things via the web.

For example, shared hosting is dirt cheap and supports cgi-bin; VMs on the cloud are also dirt cheap and you probably don't need more than a $5 instance to POC something that will be good enough to test interest. Knowing more about pricing models is part of that. This is an interesting article about SaaS pricing models, and know more about that is certainly part of creating paid services. Enjoy.

https://garrettdimon.com/journal/posts/data-modeling-saas-entitlements-and-pricing

* sorry the code examples in here are Python, but I think for this purpose we can look past that

submitted by /u/OODLER577
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