Variable in file name for babel output?

Variable in file name for babel output?

[Loris Bennett]

Hi,

Is it possible to pass a variable to a source block such that the
variable can be used as part of the name of the output file?

Currently I have

#+HEADER: :var data=timelimit-elapsed-data year=2011 :colnames yes
#+HEADER: :session *r* :file (org-babel-temp-file "time-elapsed-" ".pdf")

which gets me a different name for each value of 'year', but ideally I
would like the files to be called

time-elapsed-2011.pdf
time-elapsed-2012.pdf
time-elapsed-2013.pdf

etc.

Can this be done? 

Cheers,

Loris

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Re: Variable in file name for babel output?

[Andreas Leha]

Hi Loris,

"Loris Bennett" <loris.bennett@fu-berlin.de> writes:

> Hi,
>
> Is it possible to pass a variable to a source block such that the
> variable can be used as part of the name of the output file?
>
> Currently I have
>
> #+HEADER: :var data=timelimit-elapsed-data year=2011 :colnames yes
> #+HEADER: :session *r* :file (org-babel-temp-file "time-elapsed-" ".pdf")
>
> which gets me a different name for each value of 'year', but ideally I
> would like the files to be called
>
> time-elapsed-2011.pdf
> time-elapsed-2012.pdf
> time-elapsed-2013.pdf
>
> etc.
>
> Can this be done? 


Maybe not what you are looking for, but you could handle the assembly of
the filename within your code block.

Something like:

#+HEADER: :var year=2011 :session *r* :results file
#+begin_src R
  filename <- paste0("time-elapsed-", year, ".pdf")
  
  pdf(filename)
    ## your code
  dev.off()
  
  filename
#+end_src

Regards,
Andreas

Re: Variable in file name for babel output?

[Loris Bennett]

Hi Andreas,

Andreas Leha <andreas.leha@med.uni-goettingen.de> writes:

> Hi Loris,
>
> "Loris Bennett" <loris.bennett@fu-berlin.de> writes:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Is it possible to pass a variable to a source block such that the
>> variable can be used as part of the name of the output file?
>>
>> Currently I have
>>
>> #+HEADER: :var data=timelimit-elapsed-data year=2011 :colnames yes
>> #+HEADER: :session *r* :file (org-babel-temp-file "time-elapsed-" ".pdf")
>>
>> which gets me a different name for each value of 'year', but ideally I
>> would like the files to be called
>>
>> time-elapsed-2011.pdf
>> time-elapsed-2012.pdf
>> time-elapsed-2013.pdf
>>
>> etc.
>>
>> Can this be done? 
>
>
> Maybe not what you are looking for, but you could handle the assembly of
> the filename within your code block.
>
> Something like:
>
> #+HEADER: :var year=2011 :session *r* :results file
> #+begin_src R
>   filename <- paste0("time-elapsed-", year, ".pdf")
>   
>   pdf(filename)
>     ## your code
>   dev.off()
>   
>   filename
> #+end_src
>
> Regards,
> Andreas

Thanks, that is in fact exactly what I need.  Looking at the
documentation again, I see that it says:

"Some languages including R, gnuplot, dot, and ditaa provide special
handling of the :file header argument automatically wrapping the code
block body in the boilerplate code required to save output to the
specified file. This is often useful for saving graphical output of a
code block to the specified file."

I just didn't understand this at first.  Maybe the following sentence
should/could be added:

"... the specified file.  This means that the argument of the :file
header can be omitted and the file name can be generated within the
source block."

Cheers,

Loris

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