How to escape characters in tables

How to escape characters in tables

[Ken.Williams]

I posted a question on Stack Overflow a few days ago, I'm wondering whether someone might want to take a look:

  http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5144862/escape-pipe-character-in-org-mode

The issue is that I've got tables whose cells contain the '|' character (it's a table of regular expressions), and I can't seem to figure out how to escape it so that it doesn't mean a delimiter between cells.  Anyone have advice or a pointer to the docs I can't seem to find?

Thanks.

--
Ken Williams
Senior Research Scientist

Thomson Reuters

http://labs.thomsonreuters.com

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Re: How to escape characters in tables

[Eric S Fraga]

<Ken.Williams@thomsonreuters.com> writes:

> I posted a question on Stack Overflow a few days ago, I'm wondering
> whether someone might want to take a look:
>
>   http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5144862/escape-pipe-character-in-org-mode
>
> The issue is that I've got tables whose cells contain the '|'
> character (it's a table of regular expressions), and I can't seem to
> figure out how to escape it so that it doesn't mean a delimiter
> between cells.  Anyone have advice or a pointer to the docs I can't
> seem to find?

I guess it all depends on what you want to do with the resulting
document.  You could always insert a character that looks like the '|'
character, such as the unicode "LIGHT VERTICAL BAR" (0x2758) character,
'❘', and I'm sure there are others that could be used... org should
ignore this character as a table delimiter.

-- 
: Eric S Fraga (GnuPG: 0xC89193D8FFFCF67D) in Emacs 24.0.50.1
: using Org-mode version 7.4 (release_7.4.592.gc431)

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Re: How to escape characters in tables

[Ken.Williams]

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On 3/3/11 9:57 AM, "Eric S Fraga" <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk> wrote:

><Ken.Williams@thomsonreuters.com> writes:
>
>>... I've got tables whose cells contain the '|'
>> character (it's a table of regular expressions), and I can't seem to
>> figure out how to escape it so that it doesn't mean a delimiter
>> between cells.  Anyone have advice or a pointer to the docs I can't
>> seem to find?
>
>I guess it all depends on what you want to do with the resulting
>document.  You could always insert a character that looks like the '|'
>character, such as the unicode "LIGHT VERTICAL BAR" (0x2758) character,
>'❘', and I'm sure there are others that could be used... org should
>ignore this character as a table delimiter.


Thanks Eric.  That's not a great solution in this case, because in order
to work in a regex it needs to be the character '|', 0x7C.

Is there some way to put in characters by ASCII code maybe?


--
Ken Williams
Senior Research Scientist
Thomson Reuters
http://labs.thomsonreuters.com


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Re: How to escape characters in tables

[Suvayu Ali]

On Wed, 2 Mar 2011 09:25:57 -0600
<Ken.Williams@thomsonreuters.com> wrote:

> The issue is that I've got tables whose cells contain the '|'
> character (it's a table of regular expressions), and I can't seem to
> figure out how to escape it so that it doesn't mean a delimiter
> between cells.  Anyone have advice or a pointer to the docs I can't
> seem to find?
> 

I don't think you can.

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2011-03/msg00171.html

> Thanks.
> 
> --
> Ken Williams

-- 
Suvayu

Open source is the future. It sets us free.

Re: How to escape characters in tables

[Ken.Williams]

On 3/3/11 9:07 PM, "Suvayu Ali" <fatkasuvayu+linux@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Wed, 2 Mar 2011 09:25:57 -0600
><Ken.Williams@thomsonreuters.com> wrote:
>
>> The issue is that I've got tables whose cells contain the '|'
>> character (it's a table of regular expressions), and I can't seem to
>> figure out how to escape it so that it doesn't mean a delimiter
>> between cells.  Anyone have advice or a pointer to the docs I can't
>> seem to find?
>> 
>
>I don't think you can.

I'm making slight progress, actually.

On StackOverflow 
(http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5144862/escape-pipe-character-in-org-mo
de), it was suggested to use the \vert{} character escape, which does
work.  

However, since this is code (a regular expression), I want it to appear
monospaced, so I'm not out of the woods yet - here's a test case that
shows my intent:

  | foo | =m/foo\vert{}foodfight/= |

The \vert{} seems not to work inside a =...= construction.  Furthermore,
the =...= construction is problematic there because it conflicts with the
start-of-formula syntax.


--
Ken Williams
Senior Research Scientist
Thomson Reuters
http://labs.thomsonreuters.com

Re: How to escape characters in tables

[Camille persson]

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 Hi Ken,

2011/3/4 <Ken.Williams@thomsonreuters.com>

>
>
>
>
> On 3/3/11 9:07 PM, "Suvayu Ali" <fatkasuvayu+linux@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >On Wed, 2 Mar 2011 09:25:57 -0600
> ><Ken.Williams@thomsonreuters.com> wrote:
> >
> >> The issue is that I've got tables whose cells contain the '|'
> >> character (it's a table of regular expressions), and I can't seem to
> >> figure out how to escape it so that it doesn't mean a delimiter
> >> between cells.  Anyone have advice or a pointer to the docs I can't
> >> seem to find?
> >>
> >
> >I don't think you can.
>
> I'm making slight progress, actually.
>
> On StackOverflow
> (
> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5144862/escape-pipe-character-in-org-mo
> de), it was suggested to use the \vert{} character escape, which does
> work.
>
> However, since this is code (a regular expression), I want it to appear
> monospaced, so I'm not out of the woods yet - here's a test case that
> shows my intent:


>  | foo | =m/foo\vert{}foodfight/= |
>
> The \vert{} seems not to work inside a =...= construction.  Furthermore,
> the =...= construction is problematic there because it conflicts with the
> start-of-formula syntax.
>

=...= is used for code so it is printed as it written
You may use \texttt{}
| foo | \texttt{m\/foo\vert{}foodfight\/} |

I don't have emacs right now so I can test it... but it should work

CP


>
>
> --
> Ken Williams
> Senior Research Scientist
> Thomson Reuters
> http://labs.thomsonreuters.com
>
>
>

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Re: How to escape characters in tables

[Ken.Williams]

From:  Camille persson <camille.persson@gmail.com>
> 2011/3/4  <Ken.Williams@thomsonreuters.com>
>> [...] here's a test case that shows my intent:
>> 
>>   | foo | =m/foo\vert{}foodfight/= |
>> 
>> The \vert{} seems not to work inside a =...= construction.  Furthermore,
>> the =...= construction is problematic there because it conflicts with
>>the
>> start-of-formula syntax.


> =...= is used for code so it is printed as it written
> You may use \texttt{}
> | foo | \texttt{m\/foo\vert{}foodfight\/} |


Unfortunately that doesn't work when exporting to HTML though, I assume
it's for LaTeX export only?


I'd suggest there are 3 things that need to be addressed/fixed in org-mode.

First, the table-parser should respect =...= sections and skip over them,
just like a C preprocessor respects double-quoted string sections.

Second, there should be a way to indicate verbatim sections that doesn't
conflict with formula syntax.

Finally, there should be a way (e.g. \x{...}) to stick in a character by
ASCII/Unicode number.  This would help with several issues when a literal
character is intended but it conflicts with a markup character.


--
Ken Williams
Senior Research Scientist
Thomson Reuters
http://labs.thomsonreuters.com