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

[Torsten Wagner <torsten.wagner@gmail.com>]

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Hi again,

I think I got a bit more of an idea what is going wrong thanks to Nick.

I use $1 = remote(prf94120_orig, @@#$6)

which reads copy from table prf94120_orig  row (@)  of the current to be
processed field (@#)  column ($) 6 into column ($) 1.
The org-mode manual refers to @# as operator for formulas and hence I
believe the result will be parsed by calc to get a meaningful output. That
is ok for simple strings without space or comma separators, since they
remain strings.

However, a string like "text,text" will be send to calc as ("text","text")
which is the calc notation for imaginary numbers.

Either, I should use a different way to copy the column or this could be
considered as a bug?!

Actually, I still do not understand the need to let calc parse that a
field-content.
If I want to do math, I am not suppose to express this explicit by my
formula?
Instead of having a single field content of "1 + 2" evaluated to be "3" by
remote copy, I would expect
to do something like remote(NAME, REF) + remote(NAME, REF) for calculating
the sum of two remote fields or in case I really have a complete expression
in a single field, I would expect to do something like (calc remote(NAME,
REF)) explicit to get it parsed by calc and placing the result in the new
table?!

Somehow, I miss something. Would be glad if someone could explain to me the
reason for the original behaviour.

Thanks

Torsten







On 15 July 2013 15:36, Nick Dokos <ndokos@gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>
>
>

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