How to feed range from org-table filled with strings to code-block via tblfm?

Question

Following Situation:

• I would like to calculate some fields from an org-table filled with strings.
• There are many tables which all could share the same lisp-code.
• The lisp-code is rather complex and long.
• It should run for a single table multiple times, but with different parameters.
• I would like to share the org-document along with calculation-ability.

Is it possible to achive this? If so how to achieve this?

I have done some simple tests to show you where my problem is:

#+NAME: test3
#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp :var x="foobar"
(length x)
#+END_SRC

#+TBLNAME: test3-tbl
| blahbar |   |
| testi   | 7 |
#+TBLFM: @2$2='(org-sbe test3 (x $@1$1))

The above code works it takes one string from the table and prints its length into the table, fine.

Next code is also working:

#+NAME: test5
#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp :var x='(2 3)
(* (car x) (cadr x))
#+END_SRC

#+TBLNAME: test5-tbl
| 4 |  5 |
|---+----|
| 6 | 20 |
#+TBLFM: @>$1='(org-sbe test5)::@>$2='(org-sbe test5 (x @1$1..@1$2))

It takes a range of numbers from the table and does some calculation, fine.

Now I tried to combine the stuff from above, and there I hit the wall. How to give a range (fields @1$1 to @1$2) from test-tbl4 to code-block test4?

#+NAME: test4
#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp :var x='("foobar" "barfoo")
(concat (car x) (cadr x))
#+END_SRC

#+TBLNAME: test4-tbl
| blahbar      | test   |
| foobarbarfoo | #ERROR |
#+TBLFM: @>$1='(org-sbe test4)::@>$2='(org-sbe test4 (x $@1$1..$@1$2))

As you can see by #ERROR it is not working.

So my Questions:

1. How get table test4-tbl to work with code-block test4?
2. And could you please point me to the documentation where this is described?

Answer 1

The interpretation of a cell’s value as a string with the $ prefix doesn’t seem to work for ranges of cells. Your example does work without the range reference though:

#+NAME: test4
#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp :var x='("foobar" "barfoo")
(concat (car x) (cadr x))
#+END_SRC

#+TBLNAME: test4-tbl
| blahbar      | test        |
| foobarbarfoo | blahbartest |
#+TBLFM: @>$1='(org-sbe test4)::@>$2='(org-sbe test4 (x $@1$1 $@1$2))

If you prefer range references, I’d change the code block to

#+NAME: test5
#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp :var x='()
(mapconcat 'prin1-to-string x "")
#+END_SRC

#+TBLNAME: test4-tbl
| blahbar      | test        | another            |
| foobarbarfoo | blahbartest | blahbartestanother |
#+TBLFM: @>$3='(org-sbe test5 (x @1$1..@1$3))

Answer 2

As of the org-mode git version since 2018-03-19, you can pass a range via org-sbe as a list:

#+name: concat
#+begin_src emacs-lisp :eval yes
  (mapconcat #'identity x "")
#+end_src

| foo | bar | foobar |
#+TBLFM: $3 = '(org-sbe concat (x (list $1..$2)))

This will now work correctly even if the table cells contain quotes or backslashes.