User Story: Path Rewrites

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What's your user story?
As a publisher using a static website renderer I would like to be able to rewrite paths reflecting the input directory structure in order to align them with some output directory structure produced subsequently by a static website renderer. I may also just want to replace a file extension like .md with .html.

How would you like the system behave to satisfy your needs? How would you like it not?

I would like an option pathRewrites which is either ...

Alternative 1: versatile

... a map where key refers to the intended replacement and value is an array of one or more search strings or regular expression patterns to replace with key.

{
  "linking": {
    "pathRewrites": {
       ".html": [ ".md" ],
       "../target/dir/": ["../someDir/", "../some/other/"],
       "$1/folder": [ "^(.*)/directory" ]
    }
  }
}

In particular the use of an array in the value position allows to address situations in which a static website renderer or compiler collects files from multiple directories and writes them into a single target directory.

Alternative 2: simple

... a map where key refers to the regular expression search pattern and value is the replacement string

{
  "linking": {
    "pathRewrites": {
       ".md": ".html",
       "../someDir/": "../target/dir/",
       "^(.*)/directory": "$1/folder"
    }
  }
}

Alternative 3: both

... a map where key refers to the intended replacement and value is is a search string or an array of one or more search strings or regular expression patterns to replace with key.

Do you know examples of systems that have a similar feature you need?

TypeScript's paths option.

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Related #165

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#241 implements alternative 3.