help with writing a dired function to convert md to org with pandoc CLI..started but stuck

Question

im trying to write a function that will be used in dired where i would launch it on the file at point and it will convert it using pandoc. i have the following code chunk (warning: my coding skills are basiclly zero :))

 (defun  z/dired-shell-md2org ()
 ""
 (interactive)
 (shell-command (concat "pandoc -o OUTPUT.org" (dired-file-name-at-point))))

the original pandoc command i use succesfuly is this

pandoc -o EDA.org EDA.md 

can anyone guide me on 2 things:

1. how does one get the current file variable (i think its dired-file-name-at-point) to be the last word

2. is there a way that instead of OUTPUT.org it will use the same filename (sans extension) of original file at point?

Basically i want the converted orf file to have the same name as the original md file

Answer 1

Sounds like you want something like (format "pandoc -o %s.org" (file-name-base (dired-get-filename))) instead of (concat...). You can use dired-file-name-at-point if you want to, but that requires point to actually be on the file name, and not just somewhere on the same line. E.g. (untested):

(defun  z/dired-shell-md2org ()
 "..."
 (interactive)
 (let ((base  (file-name-base (dired-get-filename))))
   (shell-command (format "pandoc -o %s.org %.md" base base))))

Or this (to automatically quote file names for shell etc.):

(require 'dired-aux)

(defun  z/dired-shell-md2org ()
  "..."
  (interactive)
  (let* ((file  (dired-get-filename))
         (base  (file-name-base file)))
    (unless (string= ".md" (file-name-extension file :PERIOD))
      (error "File is not an MD file"))
    (dired-run-shell-command
      (dired-shell-stuff-it "pandoc -o "
                            (list (format " %s.org" base) (format " %s.md" base))
                            nil))))