org table lisp concat semi-colon issue

Question

I am not sure how to describe this problem so I am giving some example

Without Semi-colon

| John | Snow | John Snow |
| John | Doe  | John Doe  |
| Mery | Jane | Mery Jane |
#+TBLFM: $3='(concat $1 " " $2)

The result is as expected

With Semi-colon

| John | Snow | " $2) |
| John | Doe  | " $2) |
| Mery | Jane | " $2) |
#+TBLFM: $3='(concat $1 ";" $2)

What I expected was -

| John | Snow | John;Snow |
| John | Doe  | John;Doe  |
| Mery | Jane | Mery;Jane |
#+TBLFM: $3='(concat $1 ";" $2)

Can anyone explain this? and also how to solve this problem.

Answer 1

This doesn't look beautiful at all, but just for solving the issue...

You can use

(string 59)

or

"\u003B"

instead of ";". ASCII number 59 (3B in hexadecimal) stands for semicolon. For other special chars like period, single-quote etc., the same method will work as well.