Remove rows/columns of Org table before passing to a Babel block

Question

Is there a simple way to remove specific rows/columns of an Org table when passing them to a Babel block?

For example, I'd like to process the data in the table below using Matlab. The column headers are automatically removed, but I also need the row 'headers' on the left to organize the data before processing.

#+name: test-table
|            | colheader1 | colheader2 |
|------------+------------+------------|
| rowheader1 |          2 |          8 |
| rowheader2 |          4 |         10 |
| rowheader3 |          6 |         12 |

#+begin_src matlab :var x=test-table
a = x;
ans = a
#+end_src

If the leftmost column with 'headers' were removed, Matlab would receive the matrix [2 8;4 10;6 12], and the result would be:

#+results:
| 2 |  8 |
| 4 | 10 |
| 6 | 12 |

However, I get no result, presumably since Matlab doesn't know how to process a matrix with text and numerics without some type of cell classification.

Answer 1

I don't have matlab - here's a python version:

#+name: test-table
|            | colheader1 | colheader2 |
|------------+------------+------------|
| rowheader1 |          2 |          8 |
| rowheader2 |          4 |         10 |
| rowheader3 |          6 |         12 |

#+begin_src python :results value :var x=test-table[,1:2]
    return x
#+end_src

#+RESULTS:
| 2 |  8 |
| 4 | 10 |
| 6 | 12 |

See Environment of a Code Block.