Re: [BUG] Inconsistent org-babel tangle behaviour

[Thibaut Meyer via "General discussions about Org-mode." <emacs-orgmode@gnu.org>]

> Here, a language is actually specified. The language is ":tangle" (there
> is nothing stopping anyone from creating a language name starting from
> colon).

I see. I just assumed that header arguments and switches were
"recognized" and not considered as the language if placed positionally
first.

> Src block without language could indeed be tangled in your case.

That would be indeed nice...

> However, if the :tangle value is set to something like "yes", there is
> no way or can deduce the tangle file name.

.. but I guess that this prevents us from supporting this use case.

> Usually, you can simply use "conf" or "text" language name as a
> placeholder.

It's true that once you know the behaviour, it's not that big of a deal to
do so.

>> The documentation states:
>> [Working with source code > Structure of Code Blocks]
>> "When ‘<language>’ identifier is omitted, the block also cannot have
>> ‘<switches>’ and ‘<header arguments>’."
>>
>> but, to my knowledge, there is no mention regarding the fact that the
>> headers assigned through the "header-args" property should not be
>> applied if a block has no language identifier.
>
> That part of the manual can be improved. Maybe something like below.
>
>   When =<language>= identifier is omitted, the block also should not
>   have =<switches>= and =<header arguments>=.  Otherwise, the first
>   switch/argument will be treated as =<language>=.
>
> Let me know if it clarifies things.

It does clarify things. In addition, I think that a small mention of
that "quirk" in the "Extracting Source Code" part of the manual would
also be in order. I'll send a patch shortly.

Thibaut