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This seems like a convoluted method to achieve the end goal, straight up regex parsing pages seems like a last ditch effort not the up front start.

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yeah, AFAIK the MediaWiki people spent a lot of time to write a new parser for their visual editor that creates an AST from the syntax. That should be a much better way to create whatever format you want.

OTOH this is just hearsay and I never really looked into it. So maybe this was the last ditch and OP just did not mention the failed attempts before?

tldr; There are 3 parsers for wikitext, 1. the "old" wikitext parser written in php 2. a newer effort written in js and named parsoid 3. parsoid.php which is the one currently in use on (most?) WikiMedia sites.

All the important details are on the wiki page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid

Disclosure: I work for the Wikimedia foundation but not directly on the parsing code. Anything I post on hacker news does not represent the views of my employer.

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