How to include the output of a shell command in org-mode source code block?

Question

For example, I got a demo to show a command and its output, and I want to insert them into an .org file like a source code snippet of C or something. I then want to be able to export the file to an HTML file, and have the block highlighted just like examples are in many books.

For example, I have

#+BEGIN_SRC shell
$ ls
dir1
dir2
file1
file2
...
or any other examples like this
...
#+END_SRC

but it cannot be converted to HTML: An error message that reads

shell-mode: Wrong type argument: processp, nil

shows up all the time. What mode should I use to replace shell, and if I should not use the #+BEGIN_SRC...#+END_SRC format, what should I use instead?

Answer 1

If you want to construct examples yourself (that's what I'm getting from your question, but correct me if I'm wrong), use an EXAMPLE block instead of a SRC block:

#+BEGIN_EXAMPLE
$ ls
dir1
dir2
file1
file2
...
#+END_EXAMPLE

When exporting to HTML, this block becomes:

<pre class="example">
$ ls
dir1
dir2
file1
file2
...
</pre>

As you can see, the contents of the exported block are exactly the same as the contents of the original EXAMPLE block.

---

If you actually want to run one or more commands to produce output dynamically and include both the commands and the results in your HTML document, you need to modify the SRC block to look like this:

#+BEGIN_SRC sh :exports both
ls
#+END_SRC

If the output of the ls command includes the directories and files you listed in your example (dir1, dir2, file1, file2), this will export to:

<div class="org-src-container">
  <pre class="src src-sh">
    ls
  </pre>
</div>

<table>
  <colgroup>
    <col class="left" />
  </colgroup>
  <tbody>
    <tr>
      <td class="left">dir1</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td class="left">dir2</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td class="left">file1</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td class="left">file2</td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

As you can see, the code itself is wrapped in a code block, and the results are listed in a table.

Note that you will need to enable support for sh code blocks explicitly via:

(require 'ob-sh)
(org-babel-do-load-languages 'org-babel-load-languages '((sh . t)))

This is because by default Org Babel only enables support for Emacs Lisp code blocks (as explained here).