I would do this:

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp
(defun org-get-named-block-contents (name)
  (save-excursion
    (goto-char (point-min))
    (let ((regexp (org-babel-named-src-block-regexp-for-name name)))
      (or (and (looking-at regexp)
      (progn (goto-char (match-beginning 1))
     (line-beginning-position)))
 (ignore-errors (org-next-block 1 nil regexp)))
      (org-babel-expand-src-block))))
#+END_SRC

This is basically what org-babel-find-named-block does, with the (org-babel-expand-src-block) return instead of the position. It avoids the double save-excursion.

This is probably faster than any alternative that involves parsing the buffer, especially for large buffers.
John

-----------------------------------
Professor John Kitchin 
Doherty Hall A207F
Department of Chemical Engineering
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
412-268-7803


On Fri, Nov 27, 2020 at 10:47 PM George Mauer <gmauer@gmail.com> wrote:
Well that pains me on a software-engineer-aip-design level but that works! Thanks a lot.

On Fri, Nov 27, 2020 at 8:22 PM Kyle Meyer <kyle@kyleam.com> wrote:
George Mauer writes:

> I'm trying to figure out how I could fetch the contents of another block by
> name from an elisp script
>
> I've seen `org-sbe` but I just want to get the block contents, (ideally
> with noweb and vars filled in - just as it would be tangled if we were to
> tangle it)
>
> How do I do that?

How about something like this?

  (save-excursion
    (goto-char (org-babel-find-named-block "b"))
    (org-babel-expand-src-block))