Why does a column's name need to start with a letter? Changed source with no perceivable side-effects

[Frozenlock <frozenlock@gmail.com>]

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Greetings,

First and foremost, I must say I'm a new Org-mode user... as well as a new
emacs user... and have only limited experience with lisp.

I'm using a table in org-mode as a database, from which I retrieve
information as needed from other tables.
This database stores multiples components with names starting by numbers and
with the character "-" in them. For example: "10K-AN-D8".
I want to be able to refer to its column with $10K-AN-D8. Yet, this is
impossible at the moment.

I've looked in org-table.el and found, at line 2038:

(if (string-match "^[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9]*$" name)

which, once replaced by this:

(if (string-match "^[-_a-zA-Z0-9]*$" name)

Provides me with the ability to name (and refer) columns in any way I want.

However, I'm reluctant to use this feature; surely there was a reason for
this limitation.
Could someone point it out for me?

If there's no reason not to name columns as we want, perhaps it could be
modified in future versions?

Thank you very much in advance!

Christian

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