Re: [bug?] Copy content from one to another table changes the content

[Nick Dokos <ndokos@gmail.com>]

Torsten Wagner <torsten.wagner@gmail.com> writes:

>
> I can confirm that behaviour for org-mode < 8.0 (tested on 7.9.3f) if that matter.
> Furtermore, I tested a lot of alternatives.
> "lastname, firstname"
> lastname, firstname
> lastname; firstname
> etc.
> It seems, they all get somehow evaluated by calc, which ends up in funny different results.
> I do not understand what was the intention of letting the code be parsed by calc but it seems to cause trouble.
>

As I said, I don't know much about the implementation of tables, but I
think passing every entry in the table through calc is by design. And it
does not need to cause trouble either:

(calc-eval "abc, def") ---> "abc, def"

So trying to selectively *not* pass a cell through calc seems to be the
wrong way to go.

> Will test to comment how to get around it
>
> Thanks
> Torsten
>
> On 15 July 2013 11:43, Torsten Wagner <torsten.wagner@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>     Hi Nick,
>    
>     very good observation. Just wonder are we the first who observe this problem?!
>     It seems org-table-make-reference and calc-eval have some sort of an different idea of the data content.
>     Yes calc use that notation to deal with imaginary numbers. Funny coincidence, the students in that list just struggle with exactly those imaginary numbers and now there names
>     became a imaginary number itself... ;)
>    
>     Thanks for the tip, I will see if some search and replace helps me to create a intermediate solution.
>    
>     Thanks
>    
>     Torsten
>
>     On 14 July 2013 05:29, Nick Dokos <ndokos@gmail.com> wrote:
>    
>         Torsten Wagner <torsten.wagner@gmail.com> writes:
>        
>         > I just notice a strange behaviour within tables. I want to copy a
>         > column of one table into another... using $1=remote(prf94120_orig,
>         > @@#$6). The original content consist of names in the form
>         > "lastname,firstnames". However, executing the above formular I receive
>         > "lastname + firstnames i"
>         >
>         > I have totally no clue what is the reason for that.... a bug?!
>         > Happens within Org-mode version 8.0.3
>         >
>        
>         I tried it (on a single table too - no remote) and I get the same
>         behavior. I can't pretend to understand how anything in org-table.el
>         works, but I think this is a clue: on line 2678,
>         org-table-make-reference is called. If I call it by hand like this
>        
>           (org-table-make-reference "a, b" nil nil nil) --> "(a, b)"
>        
>         Then on line 2706, calc-eval is called. If I call it by hand on the
>         value above
>        
>           (calc-eval "(a, b)") --> "a + b i"
>        
>         I think it's trying to do arithmetic on complex numbers...
>         --
>         Nick
>

-- 
Nick