Inline the value of an Org-mode property?

Question

Quite a while ago, I've created a word document where I defined variables, did calculations with them, and had the results printed inline into the document. Example output, where the result has been calculated from variables a = 1 and b = 2:

“The result of 1 plus 2 is 3”

For org-mode, I found that I can defined properties, and do basic calculations with them. But how do I output their values into running text, i.e. without using a table.

Naturally, I want the calculated value to be visible in the text buffer right in EMACS. If it’s only possible to see the value in an exported PDF, for example, then that’s not interesting.

Answer 1

You have to pick a language, and then src_<lang>{code}. For example,

src_octave{2+3}

When you evaluate that (with C-c C-c), you should see:

src_octave{2+3} {{{results(=5=)}}}

And 5 will be exported to PDF. If you want to use variables defined elsewhere, you can use the session option.

#+BEGIN_SRC octave :results output :session foo
a = 1;
b = 2;
#+END_SRC
#+RESULTS:

And then elsewhere:

src_octave[:session foo]{a+b} {{{results(=3=)}}}  

See http://orgmode.org/manual/Evaluating-code-blocks.html for more details.