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How Compilers & Interpreters Work 01 := Lexical Analysis

Mon, 08 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Hello! This post is the first of a series of short posts going through what I learn as I research how compilers work. This is to help me write my Volq programming language, although last year I could’ve taken a module at university about compilers but I chose other modules instead, so now I’m researching it on my own.

A Lexical Analyser, or a lexer or scanner for short, is the first component of a compiler that processes your source code. It is also relevant in areas such as Natural Language Processing (NLP), for example, your prompt being turned from text into tokens when you’re talking to your favourite LLM, like ChatGPT or Claude etc.

A lexer reads source code of a program as its input. It scans the characters in the source code and then separates a group of characters into a lexeme, which is an individual segment of code with a certain meaning. For example, directives such as if or while, or variable names and what operators and values they’re initialised with.

The lexeme is then matched to a certain type of token depending on what it is. For example, in the case of the lexeme while, this is a word reserved to the programming language and is outputted as a KEYWORD token. Another lexeme dog could be outputted as a IDENTIFIER or a LITERAL, depending on whether it’s a variable or function name, or data in the form as a string.

This cycle is repeated until the end of the source code is reached, and the result is a stream of tokens representing all the source code provided. The lexer does not understand the meaning of the program and what it is doing. The only logical decisions it makes are separating out lexemes and categorising them into a type of token.

There are several types of tokens:

Keyword
- A reserved word in the programming language with a fixed meaning
- A keyword cannot be used as a variable name
- Examples include: if, else, while, do, return, int, class
Identifier
- A name chosen by programmer for something defined in source code, such as a variable, function or class
- Examples include: x, counter, harmonicSum, Stack
Literal/constant
- A fixed value written in source code by the programmer
- Examples include: 5, 3.14, "thisisastring", 'W', true, false
Operator
- A symbol with a defined arithmetic or comparison operation to perform on compatible values
- May take two operands (binary), e.g. 2 + 2, or only one operand (unary), e.g. 3++
- Examples include: +, -, *, /, =, ==, >=, <=, &&, ||
Separator
- A symbol that groups or isolates other tokens in the source code
- For some languages, separators can act as delimiters for ending lines of code, e.g. ; in Java
- Examples include: ;, :, (, ), {, }, [, ]
Comment
- Extra text added into the source code which is ignored by the compiler
- Some lexers may pass comments to the parser, others may discard them first
- Not ignored during literate programming, i.e. generating Javadoc
- Examples include: # This is a Python style comment, // This is a Java style comment, /* This is a Java style inline comment and multi-line comment block */
Newline
- Line break in the source code, i.e. every time the programmer presses the enter key
Indent and Dedent
- Increasing or decreasing the level of indentation to help group blocks of code
EOF
- EOF is short for End Of File; it indicates the lexer has reached the end of the file and there are no more characters to process

Different lexers may treat some tokens differently, for example, some languages with the syntax convention to separate lines of code with line breaks, would pass all Newline tokens to the parser. Others that use a different syntax convention, semicolons to indicate the end of a code statement for example, may ignore generating Newline tokens.

Let’s look at an example of lexing a small Python-esque program into tokens. It doesn’t do much, it just asks the user for their favourite colour and responds with either me too or good choice.

# Take input from user
answer = input("What's your favourite colour?")
if answer == "purple":
	print("Me too!")
else:
	print("Good choice.")

# End of program

And now lets look at the possible output of tokens after being analysed by a lexical analyser:

COMMENT( Take input from user)
NEWLINE

IDENTIFIER(answer)
OPERATOR(=)
IDENTIFIER(input)
SEPARATOR(()
LITERAL("What's your favourite colour?")
SEPARATOR())
NEWLINE

KEYWORD(if)
IDENTIFIER(answer)
OPERATOR(==)
LITERAL("purple")
SEPARATOR(:)
NEWLINE

INDENT
IDENTIFIER(print)
SEPARATOR(()
LITERAL("Me too!")
SEPARATOR())
NEWLINE

DEDENT
KEYWORD(else)
SEPARATOR(:)
NEWLINE

INDENT
IDENTIFIER(print)
SEPARATOR(()
LITERAL("Good choice.")
SEPARATOR())
NEWLINE

NEWLINE

DEDENT
COMMENT( End of program)
EOF

This might seem a bit long or confusing, but really this is exactly the same short code snippet, just now in token form! I’ve added line breaks after each NEWLINE token to make it easier to read, but these wouldn’t be present in real output.

Although input and print are included and defined in the Python-esque language, it could be argued that these should be KEYWORD tokens. However, they are indeed IDENTIFIER tokens as they are names of functions, rather than directives that change the control flow of the program, and you could still create variables called input or print if you wanted!

Since this language is sensitive to indentations, you can also see that there are INDENT and DEDENT tokens, which help the compiler to group blocks of code together later on. If you were to remove these tokens, there wouldn’t be any other indicator to tell if an if keyword should run if another if statement runs, or after which if keyword should an else keyword run!

I hope this has been an interesting read about the first stage of compiling a program, and in the next post, we will go over syntax analysis!

Introducing Volq: A programming language for simulating quantum computation

Sun, 25 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Today, I want to introduce a project I’ve been working on for a while.

Volq is an interpreted Domain Specific Language (DSL) that enables you to simulate quantum computing algorithms on your classical computer. You can play around with existing algorithms to better understand how they solve problems, or write your own from scratch using the easy-to-learn DSL based on the quantum circuit model.

I originally started this project to create a framework for simulating the quantum circuit model. But as time and development went on, I realised more and more that I am actually just writing a compiler for quantum computing software, or in other words, a linear algebra compiler for generating matrices. That’s when I decided to pivot to writing a programming language!

The backend and frontend of Volq is written 100% in Python and uses the libraries NumPy and UnitTest. The banner was created in the fabulous Google Slides (yes, seriously), because Canva wanted to charge me money to create an oval shape with dotted lines, so I thought I’d improvise.

Why?

During my third year at university, I took a module called CS3600 Quantum Computation. In this module, I learned all the mathematics behind quantum computing and about different quantum algorithms that exist, such as Deutsch-Jozsa, Bernstein Vazirani, Grover’s Algorithm and Shor’s Algorithm.

I won’t lie, I struggled with the mathematics a fair bit and I always wished I could experiment with a quantum computer, so I could better understand the outputs of different quantum algorithms given different inputs. Some solutions do exist, but in my own personal opinion, I found Python libraries like IBM Qiskit or Google Cirq somewhat unintuitive without sinking a significant amount of time into them. IBM does allow you to run your own circuits on a real quantum computer for free up to 5 qubits, but this is quite a limited number of qubits such that there’s more advantages to just simulating it, and this also requires you to register an account for another service.

After completing the exam for this module, I wanted to continue to learn more about quantum computing beyond the material of the CS3600 module and also to create this project to fill in this gap. I wanted to make applying gates on a basis state vector intuitive to the quantum circuit model itself, similar to slices of gates in a circuit. That way, you can spend less time learning and pick up the language very quickly.

Can I see some code in Volq?

Sure! Here is the circuit diagram of the Deutsch-Jozsa algorithm, courtesy of Wikipedia:

And here’s the corresponding Volq code, using a balanced function in the oracle:

QUBITS 9
RUNS 1000
INIT

APPLY X8
APPLY H0 H1 H2 H3 H4 H5 H6 H7 H8
APPLY CNOT8,0
APPLY CNOT8,1
APPLY CNOT8,2
APPLY CNOT8,3
APPLY CNOT8,4
APPLY CNOT8,5
APPLY CNOT8,6
APPLY CNOT8,7
APPLY H0 H1 H2 H3 H4 H5 H6 H7
MEASURE ALL

As you can see, the programming language is intuitive by sticking closely to the circuit diagram. Rather than learning how to create distinct circuit objects with code, this is all handled under the hood for the user, along with the number of shots and measurement.

This isn’t perfect though, and I’m looking forward to making improvements in the future to make it even more intuitive. This includes a sub-DSL for oracles (e.g. ALL 0 EXCEPT 0110) so that the option for running them in one line is there, and creating shorthands for applying the same operator on many qubits at once (e.g. H@ for a uniform superposition across the whole circuit, or X[0,3] for applying Pauli X across the first 4 qubits!).

How long do you plan to work on it for?

It would be ideal to reach a v1.0.0 release within the next 12 months, but I work in cyber security and have a lot of other things happening on the side too, so I’m expecting it to realistically take a maximum of up to 24 months. I’ll likely be working on the project on and off, and also I will be doing a lot of independent research into how compilers and parsers work under the hood, which will take a lot of time and won’t be visible in the Git commit history.

At the time of writing, Volq is currently in alpha status. The focus during the alpha is adding most of the core features of the quantum circuit model to the DSL and following the mathematics by the book; inefficient, but perfectly correct. My intentions for beta development include polishing everything up to a high standard and focusing on optimisation of operator generation to accelerate circuit execution, which would ultimately allow for larger quantum circuits.

How can I look at the source code and try it out?

First of all, thanks for scrolling down to the bottom of the page, or perhaps even reading to the end. Also the word “quantum” was mentioned 15 times in this article, I’m sorry.

The repository for Volq is on my GitHub, which I’ve linked below.

My Ride-Out with a National Highways Traffic Officer

Thu, 27 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

I work in the Cyber Security team at National Highways in the UK, I’m enjoying it and everything is going great. However, working for a business that’s responsible for critical national infrastructure brings some unexpected benefits, including interesting site visits and experiences!

This post is about an experience I had recently, which is going on a ride-out with a National Highways Traffic Officer. It’s seriously one of the coolest experiences I’ve had in a long time, so I needed to write about it!

All registrations in images have been redacted to preserve anonymity

What do Traffic Officers do?

The job of a traffic officer is fundamentally to keep the motorways safe and traffic flowing, and to intervene in anything interfering with either or both of those goals.

Tasks can be dangerous and widely vary, from responding to car crashes and breakdowns, to removing debris or animals in the road and abandoned vehicles, and sometimes even a dark, tragic side of responding to suicidal people in life-threatening situations. They’re unique in the way that they are not law enforcement, but possess some powers under the Traffic Management Act 2004 and can exercise them on England’s motorways and A roads, in the name of traffic management or road safety.

They are sometimes mistaken for police, since their vehicles have a similar green checker pattern; my uncle certainly thought they were police when I talked to him about it! Traffic officers are certainly not police though, they can’t arrest you or drive faster than the speed limit. They can pull you over, but it’s instead called a “safety intervention” and they will only do so for safety reasons (e.g. you’re driving for a long time without lights, or something’s loose and about to fall off your vehicle into the live lane). They cannot detain you, search you, or issue you fixed penalties. TOs can also direct and stop traffic completely, and it’s a criminal offence to disobey their instructions.

My experience

I arranged my TO ride-out with the Weatherhill outstation, which is right by junction 9 to Gatwick Airport on the M23. Above is a photo of me standing next to a TO vehicle with a slightly goofy pose because the jacket was too big on me (but very comfy!).

The shift initially starts with patrolling the motorways for anything abnormal. In our patrols, we noticed increased traffic and tried to understand why, reported standing water in live lanes to the control room in the South-East Regional Operations Centre (it was raining heavily that day!), and reported abnormally low speed limits when there wasn’t congestion, so that the control room operators could override and reset the signals.

Our first incident we were dispatched to was a vehicle reported to be broken down in lane 4, which is a seriously dangerous position to be in; you’re the furthest away from the hard shoulder that you can possibly be! We had to get to this as quickly as possible, so in heavy traffic conditions, we would drive on the hard shoulder with the roof lights on if it was quicker - we didn’t if it wasn’t. It’s an extremely weird sensation driving normally on the hard shoulder, it’s not something you normally do ever. The TOs usually keep to a slower speed too rather than going the speed limit, as the hard shoulder is more bumpy than live lanes and people have thrown sharp objects into it such as forks, which can puncture the tyres.

Just before we arrived at the scene, we engaged a rolling road block, which is used to gradually slow traffic in all lanes on a motorway to a stop. The TO waits until the right moment, then switches on a sign on the back of the vehicle that flashes DON’T PASS, then starts swerving left to right across all four lanes to stop cars passing while very gradually slowing down. Sitting in the car for this was so weird, it’d be illegal to do this normally!

Once traffic comes to a stop, cones are placed down in front of all lanes to prevent traffic from moving forwards and the TO quickly speaks to the vehicles at the front to tell them what’s going on. Then the TO drove over to the broken down vehicle and pushed it over to the hard shoulder, so that it was out of a live lane.

Once this was done, the TO reversed back to the cones (also very weird to watch, and normally illegal!) and released the traffic one lane at a time. The man with the broken down car arranged his own recovery, so we left him and went on our way.

Next, we had a report from the public of pedestrians walking their dogs right next to where we were on the M25. Yes, seriously. I can’t believe someone would do that either, but we went to investigate and we found 2 men with 2 large dogs on a walk at the side of the motorway!

TOs are not obligated to stop and get out and start talking to people, since they are civilians and could be putting themselves into a dangerous situation by doing so. Their job is to confirm the report and continue, then the control rooms will contact the police to deal with it. In this case we pulled over, but stayed inside the car and rolled the window down. This was enough to deter the dog-walkers to start walking up to the bridge and off the motorway, so we left it at that and went on our way. There were no more reports of walking dogs on the motorway afterwards, so we can assume they never returned.

We had a while without any reports, so we positioned ourselves strategically in the middle of the M25 junction 10 roundabout, where we can very quickly rejoin the motorway clockwise or anti-clockwise. I took some more photos here, as not many people have the opportunity to stand where I was!

Operational Technology

While we were waiting for jobs to come through, I learned more about the different OT systems that National Highways uses on the motorways. I knew about OT from taking IY3612 Critical Infrastructure Security at university, but I had no idea most of these systems on the motorway even existed! OT is an interesting area and could be a whole long blog post in itself, but I’ll save that for another day.

Operational Technology, or simply OT, are large-scale systems that are built using technology and interface physically with the real-world in some way; whether that’s reading data from sensors, or driving actuators to cause an effect (e.g. change a road sign, open a water dam, spin a nuclear centrifuge, etc). OT is not exclusive to the transport sector and is used in most other critical national infrastructure sectors across the world, including energy, food, water, defence, civil nuclear, space and more, as well as outside of CNI sectors in factories and such.

You might be thinking OT sounds similar to IT and that they’re probably just the same thing. While it’s true that they have quite a bit of overlap, particularly that they’re technology-driven digital systems with lots of interconnected devices, OT is a whole different beast to IT.

Whereas IT is commonly used in businesses and datacentres, depends on software, servers and TCP/IP networks, and is driven by lots and lots of data; OT is commonly used in factories and critical national infrastucture, depends on Industrial Control Systems (ICS) that are made up of Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs), Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems, sensors & actuators, Distributed Control Systems (DCS), Remote Terminal Units (RTUs) & more, and are important in driving robotics while maintaining safety of human life.

If all of that sounds completely alien to you, these are just the basics of OT, but they’re never taught in schools until you go into working in that industry!

Anyway, like I said, that’s all a post for a different day.

National Highways use a lot of OT in their motorways and the only part of it we notice is the signals & variable message signs. Here’s a few (but not all) of the other OT systems that they use:

MIDAS | Motorway Incident Detection and Automatic Signalling
This system is inside each lane of the road itself and counts the number of vehicles driving over, as well as their speed and length of wheelbase (so that it can tell the difference between a car and a truck), then automatically sets signals to reduce the speed limits if there’s heavy traffic, as well as sending information of average speed on that road to the National Traffic Operations Centre (NTOC) so it can be displayed live on Traffic England. On the road, it looks like a black square inside a black square when driving over it
DYNAC
This system is an Advanced Traffic Management System (ATMS), which acts as the middleman of all communications between different systems and the control room. It allows operators to view and control the angle & zoom CCTV cameras, as well as view data from MIDAS and weather sensors, set signals to reduce speed limits or divert/close lanes, set messages on variable message signs and more.
SVD | Stopped Vehicle Detection
This system uses thousands of radars along all the motorways in England to immediately detect stopped vehicles in live lanes and on hard shoulders, alerting operators in control rooms so that they can dispatch a traffic officer if assistance is required

Quick note on the security angle of OT: OT is totally hackable and vulnerable to attacks, but requires very different methods to conventional hacking, such as interfering with sensors by physically blocking them or messing with how they’re calibrated to read data, or interfering with actuators physically or through signals to make them do unsafe things. Usually these sensors and actuators are physically in difficult-to-reach places, making attacks impractical, but not impossible. Malware is the other alternative, but this isn’t straightforward since OT environments usually aren’t connected to the Internet, and the malware author will require in-depth knowledge of different industrial controllers to be able to send the right signals through the right busses and channels to achieve their goals.

If you’re interested in learning more about cyber attacks on OT (for educational purposes), I’d recommend you to listen to Darknet Diaries Episode 29: Stuxnet for the notorious Stuxnet attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, and Episode 68: Triton, for the crazy hack that targeted disabling the safety systems in a Saudi Arabian chemical plant to allow hazardous conditions that could lead to explosions or loss of human life. It’s worth a listen!

My experience (continued)

After deterring the dog-walkers to leave the motorway and then parking up for a while, we were waiting for a bit and no new jobs were coming in, so we went to visit the control room at the South-East Regional Operations Centre (SE ROC) in South Godstone. This is where the operators view the CCTV cameras, check out alerts generated by SVD when a car stops in a live lane, dispatch traffic officers, answer calls from the SOS telephones and more. Speaking to some of the operators and watching what they do was interesting, however since the weather conditions were pretty bad, I was watching emergency services live dealing with a 4-car collision and a flipped over vehicle on two of the CCTV cameras. This wasn’t nice to see, but that feeling pales in comparison to being involved in either of the incidents.

On the CCTV cameras, we also saw multiple trucks parked on the hard shoulder right before Clackett’s Lane services (between Junction 5 and 6 on the M25), which is a super dangerous place to park. So, we spoke with the bronze commander of the control room and decided we would drive over, since we were so close already.

We headed over and instructed them to leave, which all of them were on their break and were hesitant. My guess is they parked on the hard shoulder rather than the services because they wanted to avoid paying for parking, which I appreciate is expensive, but equally the hard shoulder is really unsafe!

Traffic officers cannot force them to move off the hard shoulder, but they can involve the police if the truck drivers don’t move. In the end, they all moved off the hard shoulder, and we went back to patrolling. No other jobs came through for the rest of the evening, but I was shown some of the police park-up points while we patrolled around, which was cool, since they’re normally illegal to be in, but we were allowed in them! The photo at the top of this post was taken at the park-up point by the Leatherhead Junction 9 slip road, but we also visited the turn-around point at the end of the M23, shown below. It felt very weird to be standing here on the motorway!

This was the end of my experience of going out on a ride-out with a traffic officer. A big thank you to Madeline for allowing me to join her on a shift and making the ride-out really interesting, and to the Weatherhill outstation for accommodating me. I really enjoyed this experience and learned a lot, and I hope you found this post an interesting read!

Welcome!

Wed, 20 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome to my blog! I thought I’d start one so that I could post about whichever random topics I’m interested in, as well as different things I’m working on. The writing will be a mix of normal and formal - but leaning more towards the normal side. I might post semi-frequently, or I might not depending on how much time I have!

My name is Michael, or I sometimes go by michaelchips online. At the time of writing this, it’s been two months since I started my cyber security Year in Industry at National Highways in June 2025. I’ve also completed 3 years of my undergraduate Integrated Masters MSci in Computer Science at Royal Holloway, University of London. When my time at National Highways comes to a close in June 2026, I’ll be returning to university to complete the final year of my degree.

My main interests in technology are information security, operating systems, networking and quantum computing. But outside of this, I also enjoy playing & listening to music, cars and aviation!

I’m currently focused on learning as much as I can about many different areas of information security, including identity management, secure business architecture, cryptography, critical infrastructure security and pentesting. I’m also focused on coding my project of simulating the quantum circuit model, which is written only using Python and NumPy, although there’s a lot going on at the moment and sometimes there isn’t much time for this, so development is a bit on and off right now. At the time of writing this, it’s on version v0.2.0-alpha.

This website is built using Hugo, a pretty neat open-source static site generator. It takes markdown files that you write and converts them into HTML documents with a nice theme, and the great thing about static websites is that their simplicity means they’re very fast to load (like this one!). I’m writing these markdown files using Obsidian, a really amazing software tool for taking and managing notes that I’ve been using at university for a couple of years now.

This website runs a theme called Terminal, which I like a lot for how it looks, and I’ve made my own custom modifications to it. Finally, this website is hosted for free using GitHub Pages, and you can actually see the repository with all the files for the website publicly here!

That’s all from me for now, but I’ll be posting more soon. Remember to take it easy and drink plenty of water! 🙂

🎉 Easily create your own simple yet highly customizable blog

Fri, 27 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Welcome 👋

Table of Contents

Overview

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Thu, 26 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Create a personal knowledge base and share your knowledge with your peers.

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renders as

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    - [Discord Community](https://discord.gg/z8wNYzb)
    - [GitHub](https://github.com/HugoBlox/kit)
  - Features
    - Markdown formatting
    - **inline** ~~text~~ *styles*
    - multiline
      text
    - `inline code`
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      ```js
      console.log('hello');
      console.log('code block');
      ```
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renders as

Note

A Markdown aside is useful for displaying notices, hints, or definitions to your readers.

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Wed, 25 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

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```

renders as

sequenceDiagram Alice->>John: Hello John, how are you? loop Healthcheck John->>John: Fight against hypochondria end Note right of John: Rational thoughts! John-->>Alice: Great! John->>Bob: How about you? Bob-->>John: Jolly good!

An example class diagram:

```mermaid
classDiagram
Class01 <|-- AveryLongClass : Cool
Class03 *-- Class04
Class05 o-- Class06
Class07 .. Class08
Class09 --> C2 : Where am i?
Class09 --* C3
Class09 --|> Class07
Class07 : equals()
Class07 : Object[] elementData
Class01 : size()
Class01 : int chimp
Class01 : int gorilla
Class08 <--> C2: Cool label
```

renders as

classDiagram Class01 <|-- AveryLongClass : Cool Class03 *-- Class04 Class05 o-- Class06 Class07 .. Class08 Class09 --> C2 : Where am i? Class09 --* C3 Class09 --|> Class07 Class07 : equals() Class07 : Object[] elementData Class01 : size() Class01 : int chimp Class01 : int gorilla Class08 <--> C2: Cool label

An example state diagram:

```mermaid
stateDiagram
[*] --> Still
Still --> [*]
Still --> Moving
Moving --> Still
Moving --> Crash
Crash --> [*]
```

renders as

stateDiagram [*] --> Still Still --> [*] Still --> Moving Moving --> Still Moving --> Crash Crash --> [*]

Data Frames

Save your spreadsheet as a CSV file in your page’s folder and then render it by adding the Table shortcode to your page:

{{< table path="results.csv" header="true" caption="Table 1: My results" >}}

renders as

Table 1: My results
customer_id	score
1	0
2	0.5
3	1

👩🏼‍🏫 Teach academic courses

Tue, 24 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

HugoBlox Kit is designed to give technical content creators a seamless experience. You can focus on the content and the HugoBlox Kit which this template is built upon handles the rest.

Embed videos, podcasts, code, LaTeX math, and even test students!

On this page, you’ll find some examples of the types of technical content that can be rendered with Hugo Blox.

Video

Teach your course by sharing videos with your students. Choose from one of the following approaches:

Youtube:

{{< youtube w7Ft2ymGmfc >}}

Bilibili:

{{< bilibili id="BV1WV4y1r7DF" >}}

Video file

Videos may be added to a page by either placing them in your assets/media/ media library or in your page’s folder, and then embedding them with the video shortcode:

{{< video src="my_video.mp4" controls="yes" >}}

Podcast

You can add a podcast or music to a page by placing the MP3 file in the page’s folder or the media library folder and then embedding the audio on your page with the audio shortcode:

{{< audio src="ambient-piano.mp3" >}}

Try it out:

Test students

Provide a simple yet fun self-assessment by revealing the solutions to challenges with the spoiler shortcode:

{{< spoiler text="👉 Click to view the solution" >}}
You found me!
{{< /spoiler >}}

renders as

👉 Click to view the solution

You found me 🎉

Math

HugoBlox Kit supports a Markdown extension for $\LaTeX$ math. You can enable this feature by toggling the math option in your config/_default/params.yaml file.

To render inline or block math, wrap your LaTeX math with {{< math >}}$...${{< /math >}} or {{< math >}}$$...$${{< /math >}}, respectively.

Note

We wrap the LaTeX math in the Hugo Blox math shortcode to prevent Hugo rendering our math as Markdown.

Example math block:

{{< math >}}
$$
\gamma_{n} = \frac{ \left | \left (\mathbf x_{n} - \mathbf x_{n-1} \right )^T \left [\nabla F (\mathbf x_{n}) - \nabla F (\mathbf x_{n-1}) \right ] \right |}{\left \|\nabla F(\mathbf{x}_{n}) - \nabla F(\mathbf{x}_{n-1}) \right \|^2}
$$
{{< /math >}}

renders as

$$\gamma_{n} = \frac{ \left | \left (\mathbf x_{n} - \mathbf x_{n-1} \right )^T \left [\nabla F (\mathbf x_{n}) - \nabla F (\mathbf x_{n-1}) \right ] \right |}{\left \|\nabla F(\mathbf{x}_{n}) - \nabla F(\mathbf{x}_{n-1}) \right \|^2}$$

Example inline math {{< math >}}$\nabla F(\mathbf{x}_{n})${{< /math >}} renders as $\nabla F(\mathbf{x}_{n})$ .

Example multi-line math using the math linebreak (\\):

{{< math >}}
$$f(k;p_{0}^{*}) = \begin{cases}p_{0}^{*} & \text{if }k=1, \\
1-p_{0}^{*} & \text{if }k=0.\end{cases}$$
{{< /math >}}

renders as

$$ f(k;p_{0}^{*}) = \begin{cases}p_{0}^{*} & \text{if }k=1, \\ 1-p_{0}^{*} & \text{if }k=0.\end{cases} $$

Code

HugoBlox Kit utilises Hugo’s Markdown extension for highlighting code syntax. The code theme can be selected in the config/_default/params.yaml file.

```python
import pandas as pd
data = pd.read_csv("data.csv")
data.head()
```

renders as

import pandas as pd
data = pd.read_csv("data.csv")
data.head()

Inline Images

{{< icon name="python" >}} Python

renders as

Python

✅ Manage your projects

Mon, 23 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Easily manage your projects - create ideation mind maps, Gantt charts, todo lists, and more!

Ideation

Hugo Blox supports a Markdown extension for mindmaps.

Simply insert a Markdown code block labelled as markmap and optionally set the height of the mindmap as shown in the example below.

Mindmaps can be created by simply writing the items as a Markdown list within the markmap code block, indenting each item to create as many sub-levels as you need:


```markmap {height="200px"}
- Hugo Modules
  - Hugo Blox
  - netlify
  - netlify-cms
  - slides
```

renders as

- Hugo Modules
  - Hugo Blox
  - netlify
  - netlify-cms
  - slides

Diagrams

Hugo Blox supports the Mermaid Markdown extension for diagrams.

An example Gantt diagram:

```mermaid
gantt
section Section
Completed :done,    des1, 2014-01-06,2014-01-08
Active        :active,  des2, 2014-01-07, 3d
Parallel 1   :         des3, after des1, 1d
Parallel 2   :         des4, after des1, 1d
Parallel 3   :         des5, after des3, 1d
Parallel 4   :         des6, after des4, 1d
```

renders as

gantt section Section Completed :done, des1, 2014-01-06,2014-01-08 Active :active, des2, 2014-01-07, 3d Parallel 1 : des3, after des1, 1d Parallel 2 : des4, after des1, 1d Parallel 3 : des5, after des3, 1d Parallel 4 : des6, after des4, 1d

Todo lists

You can even write your todo lists in Markdown too:

- [x] Write math example
  - [x] Write diagram example
- [ ] Do something else

renders as

Write math example
- Write diagram example
Do something else

Blog |

How Compilers & Interpreters Work 01 := Lexical Analysis

Introducing Volq: A programming language for simulating quantum computation

Why?

Can I see some code in Volq?

How long do you plan to work on it for?

How can I look at the source code and try it out?

My Ride-Out with a National Highways Traffic Officer

What do Traffic Officers do?

My experience

Operational Technology

My experience (continued)

Welcome!

🎉 Easily create your own simple yet highly customizable blog

Overview

Get Started

Crowd-funded open-source software

❤️ Click here to become a sponsor and help support Hugo Blox’s future ❤️

Ecosystem

Inspiration

Features

Themes

License

🧠 Sharpen your thinking with a second brain

Mindmaps

Highlighting

Callouts

Did you find this page helpful? Consider sharing it 🙌

📈 Communicate your results effectively with the best data visualizations

Charts

Diagrams

Data Frames

Did you find this page helpful? Consider sharing it 🙌

👩🏼‍🏫 Teach academic courses

Video

Podcast

Test students

Math

Code

Inline Images

Did you find this page helpful? Consider sharing it 🙌

✅ Manage your projects

Ideation

Diagrams

Todo lists

Did you find this page helpful? Consider sharing it 🙌