feat: ✨ generate ref-style table - first cut

.github/scripts/extract-refstyle-badges/extract-refstyle-badges.sh

@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env bash
+
+# #################################################################################
+# extract-refstyle-badges.sh
+#
+# Description:
+#   Creates a table of reference-style markdown badges from the table rows in README.md
+#
+# #################################################################################
+
+# get a reference to the current directory
+DIR="$( cd "$( dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[0]}" )" >/dev/null 2>&1 && pwd )"
+READMEFILE="${DIR}/../../../README.md"
+
+# extract the table rows from README.md, sort them, and pass them to 
+#  the awk script to generate the reference-style link for each row.
+# Add a newline at the end and write to md-badges.md
+readmerows=$(
+  cat "${READMEFILE}" | \
+  grep -E '^\| \[' | \
+  sort 
+)
+
+# add a newline before processing with awk
+printf "%s\n" "$readmerows" \
+  | awk -F '|' -f "${DIR}/extract-refstyle-badges.awk" \
+> md-badges.md
+
+# now insert the generated md-badges.md content into README.md
+
+lead='^<\!-- ### BEGIN GENERATED CONTENT -->'
+tail='^<\!-- ### END GENERATED CONTENT -->'
+
+sed -e "/$lead/,/$tail/{
+  /$lead/{
+    p;
+    r md-badges.md
+  };
+  /$tail/p;
+  d
+}" "${READMEFILE}" > "${READMEFILE}.tmp"
+mv "${READMEFILE}.tmp" "${READMEFILE}"
+
+# echo "${READMEFILE}"