Yes, it's being used as a sort of escape backslash, sort of like when you do \" to have the quotation mark actually show up, or like the <pre> tag in html. That's what I thought at first too, i.e., so the #+TITLE: etc. won't be taken literally by org-mode. But I guess I meant to ask, Is this orgmode's "official escape backslash" mechanism? What about #+BEGIN_EXAMPLE ... #+END_EXAMPLE or #+BEGIN_QUOTE ... #+END_QUOTE?  It seems like putting org-mode "code" inside of babel code wrapper would be something about writing a(n eventual) second, "external" org file while still the first org file. Or, simpler, I might create a library, i.e., an org file with useful org-mode templates etc. and have them accessible a la "linked data," the unique key being the #+NAME: field. But again, I'm very curious, what exactly is babel's relationship to "org code"? What qualifies as "org code," as far as babel is concerned?

On Sat, Apr 4, 2015 at 11:47 AM, Ken Mankoff <mankoff@gmail.com> wrote:

If it weren't wrapped, it would be exported and not show up in the document text.

  -k.

On 2015-04-04 at 11:41, Lawrence Bottorff <borgauf@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm taking a closer look at Eric Neilsen's "Emacs org-mode examples and
> cookbook," specifically the org file Eric sent me. And right off the bat I
> see something interesting:
>
> ** General metadata
>
> An initial group sets the metadata used in any title pages, headers,
> footers, etc. used by the various exporters:
>
> #+NAME: orgmode-header-metadata
> #+BEGIN_SRC org
> #+TITLE:     Emacs org-mode examples
> #+AUTHOR:    Eric H. Neilsen, Jr.
> #+EMAIL:     neilsen@fnal.gov
> #+END_SRC
>
> . . . which shows up in the final html version as just
>
> #+TITLE:     Emacs org-mode examples
> #+AUTHOR:    Eric H. Neilsen, Jr.
> #+EMAIL:     neilsen@fnal.gov
>
> Why did he use what looks like babel source formatting? What is gained from
> having org "code" as literate programming? Any docs talking specifically
> about this, best practices? My first guess is he's just using this as an
> org-to-html formatting convention, but, again, how much of "org code"
> (whatever we call "org code") can I put in babel source containers?
>
> LB