Convert markdown table rows to html (we converted some markdown tables to html so we could use the "scope" attribute in the header rows for accessibility).

markdown-table-to-html.py

import sys
import re

# input: first argument is a file that contains the piped markdown table rows
with open (sys.argv[1]) as f:
    content = f.readlines()

rows = []
pattern = re.compile("^\|[ -][ -]+")

for c in content:
     # poor man's way of excluding non-table rows in the file
     # and excluding empty header and alignment rows
     if (c.startswith('|') and not (pattern.match(c))):
          cells = c.split('|')
          # "if not..." is the poor man's way of excluding empty rows
          cells = ['<td>{}</td>'.format(cell.strip()) for cell in cells if not cell.strip() == ""]
          rows.append(cells)

# output: second argument contains the html table rows
file = open(sys.argv[2], 'w+')
file.write('<table>\n')
for r in rows:
    file.write('<tr>\n')
    for c in r:
        file.write('    {}\n'.format(c))
    file.write('</tr>\n')
file.write('</table>\n')
file.close()