Displaying contents of another file in an Org-mode buffer

Question

I have a file whose contents I would like to view dynamically from a generic Org-mode buffer.

For example, suppose I have a file called data.csv, and I'd like to display some of its contents when I visit study.org. To make up one way that this might look, study.org might appear as follows:

# -*- mode: Org; coding: utf-8; -*-
...
#+INCLUDE: "data.csv" :head 5
#+BEGIN_INCLUDE
id,name,count
1,recursion,48
2,exercise,55
3,ambrosia,85
4,division,16
#+END_INCLUDE
...

I see that someone has asked this question in the context of the Org-mode export mechanism (How to embed external file contents in org file?), but I don't see a way to include external file content in an Org buffer.

Does Org-mode support this sort of thing?

Answer 1

you can use a shell source code block

#+BEGIN_SRC sh :results output drawer
head -n 5 data.csv
#+END_SRC

Then you hit C-c C-c inside the block and run the source code which will show below the first five lines of the file in a results block