Changing Bullets to Checklist Items in Zim

If a checklist template is stored in Zim as a bulleted list, when the template is copied to a new page to create an actual checklist, the bulleted items need to be converted to checklist items.  The custom tool script below will automatically perform this conversion for all bullets on the page.

#!/usr/bin/python
# zimbulletchecklist.py
#
# PURPOSE
# Convert leading bullets to checklist items in a Zim page. 
#
# NOTES
# 1. The name of the temporary Zim page file must be passed
#  as the (only) command-line argument.
# 2. All bullets (asterisks) with only leading whitespace
#  and followed by at least one whitespace character
#  will be converted to checklists.
#
# AUTHOR
# Dreas Nielsen (RDN)
#
# COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
# Copyright (c) 2015, Dreas Nielsen
# License: GPL3
#
# HISTORY
#  Date   Remarks
# ---------- -----------------------------------------------------
# 2015-05-23 Created.  RDN.
# ==================================================================

_vdate = "2015-05-23"
_version = "1.0"

import sys
import os
import fileinput
import re

if len(sys.argv) != 2:
 sys.stderr.write("You must provide the temporary Zim page file name as a command-line argument.")
 sys.exit(1)
zimpage = sys.argv[1]
if not os.path.exists(zimpage):
 sys.stderr.write("The file %s does not exist." % zimpage)
 sys.exit(1)

bullet_rx = re.compile(r'^(\s*)\*\s(.*)$')

for line in fileinput.input(inplace=1):
 m = bullet_rx.match(line) 
 if m:
  sys.stdout.write(m.group(1)+'[ ] '+m.group(2)+'\n')
 else:
  sys.stdout.write(line)