Re: Bug: org-mode interprets * as a headline in text between #+BEGIN_.. and #+END_...

[Nicolas Goaziou <mail@nicolasgoaziou.fr>]

Hello,

Nick Dokos <ndokos@gmail.com> writes:

> Is the "* on column 0 is a headline" convention a consequence of the
> dependence on outline.el? Or is it just historical baggage? I cannot
> remember the grammar rules, but I'm wondering if the parser could be
> made to say "not a headline" in this situation, and if so, what the
> consequences might be (particularly, the bad consequences).
>
> I'm not sure whether Nicolas has actually explained this situation in
> the past, but, with gmane non compos mentis, I did not attempt to find
> an earlier discussion.

This is inherent on how the syntax is defined, and how the parser is
implemented. As an outliner, the main syntactic element in an Org
document is the headline. Everything else has a lower priority.
Therefore, a block will not be parsed before a headline.

The good side of headlines being top level elements is that parsing
(without cache) only needs to start from the closest headline above. If
blocks could be parsed before headlines, parsing should start from the
beginning of the document every time.

Regards,

-- 
Nicolas Goaziou