Today I was faced with manually updating all the figure numbers in a large markdown document. Given that Markdown Monster has a terrific extensibility model, I couldn’t resist building another addin to automate the updating of the figure numbers. I did, however, get a little carried away and extended my addin to support not only figures, but tables and code listings.

**Listing 0.** Some method1

for (var i = 0; i < 10; i++)
{
	...
}

Into this:

The method iterates 10 times. (See Listing 1.)

**Listing 1.** Some method1

for (var i = 0; i < 10; i++)
{
	...
}

Notice that the listing number changed.

Code listings, figures, and captions are all number sequentially.

How it works

This addin uses conventions to determine what is a caption or a reference to a caption.

There are three pairs of regular expressions. Each pair consists of a regular expression for the caption e.g.

**Lising 1.** Some method and a regular expression for the reference, e.g. See Listing 1.

The following are the default pairs of regular expressions:

^.*?See Table (?<Number>\d{1,3})\.?.*$
^\s*\*\*\s*Table (?<Number>\d{1,3})\.\s*\*\*.*$
^.*?See Figure (?<Number>\d{1,3})\.?.*$
.*?<figcaption>Figure (?<Number>\d{1,3})\..*
^.*?See Listing (?<Number>\d{1,3})\.?.*$
^\s*\*\*\s*Listing (?<Number>\d{1,3})\.\s*\*\*.*$

Do not worry if you’re befuddled by these regular expressions. You will only need to understand them if you wish to use different conventions in your markdown document.

Listing and Table captions are detected if they are surrounded by bold ** asterisks. There must be a single space between Listing caption type and the number.

NOTE: You can modify the regular expressions to suit your needs in the addin’s configuration.

Ignoring Captions or Caption References

To have the addin ignore a caption, or caption reference, in your document place

[//]: # (AutoNumberIgnore)

somewhere before the caption or caption reference occurs. You can use multiple ignore markers to disable multiple captions or references.

A note about figures

I like to use HTML for figures because it allows me to use the HTML5 figcaption element. This means that the addin will match the following:

<figure><img src='https://avatars1.githubusercontent.com/u/26504010?v=4&s=200'>
<figcaption>Codon Framework</figcaption></figure>

Anyway, if you’re a fan of Markdown Monster, as am I, I hope you’ll enjoy using this addin.

The addin is located on GitHub