What is the equivalent of the org-babel CALL in emacs-lisp?

Question

Let's take this simple Org code, with two Python code blocs (one which returns a list, and the other one which prints the type and the content of the parameter):

#+NAME: int
#+BEGIN_SRC python :results value
return [1, 2, 3]
#+END_SRC

#+NAME: print_table_info
#+BEGIN_SRC python :var table=[]
print "type = {}".format(type(table))
print "table = {}".format(table)
#+END_SRC

#+CALL: print_table_info(table=int) :results output

Executing the #+CALL: will produce the expected result:

#+RESULTS:
: type = <type 'list'>
: table = [1, 2, 3]

Now let's assume I want to execute this directly in emacs-lisp with org-sbe. I would have:

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp :results output
(org-sbe print_table_info ":results output" (table (org-sbe int)))
#+END_SRC

And executing this code block would produce:

#+RESULTS:
: 
: (results (quote (1 2 3)))
: 
: (results (type = <type 'str'>
: table = (1 2 3)
: "))

Two issues here, which are related:

1. This result shows that a list was not given to the print_table_info code block but instead a string. How can I actually pass a list?
2. How could I get rid from the Lisp code in the output of org-sbe and just get the plain output as when I execute the #+CALL:?

Thanks for your help!

Answer 1

Actually the issue is that org-sbe returns a string that represents a list. For instance it returns "(1 2 3)" instead of (1 2 3). Thus we need to convert the string back to a list, which was answered somewhere else, with read-from-string.

Thus the emacs-lisp source block becomes:

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp :results output
(org-sbe print_table_info ":results output" (table (car (read-from-string (org-sbe int)))))
#+END_SRC

And it returns the expected result:

#+RESULTS:
: type = <type 'list'>
: table = [1, 2, 3]

If anyone has a more elegant solution, I'm interested!