Elisp macro for working with org tables

[Mark Clements <mark.clements@ki.se>]

In response to a question on Stackoverflow (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50921305/org-table-and-named-columns-for-babel-processing), I have written an elisp macro to work with org tables:

#+NAME: test-table
| a | b |
|---+---|
| 1 | 2 |
| 3 | 4 |

#+NAME: test-table-script
#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp :var table=test-table :colnames no
  (require 'cl)
  (defmacro with-table (table expression)
    "Given an org table with colnames, evaluate an expression using the colnames.
Note: use ':colnames no' in the header -- this imports the names but does not export them."
    `(let* ((table-with-colnames (org-babel-get-colnames ,table))
            (names (loop for name in (cdr table-with-colnames)
                         collect (if (stringp name) (intern name) name))))
       (funcall
        `(lambda (data)
                   (mapcar (lambda (row)
                             (cl-destructuring-bind ,names row ,',expression))
                           data))
        (car table-with-colnames))))
  ;; example to add a third column
  (cons '(a b c) (cons 'hline (with-table table (list a b (+ a b)))))
#+END_SRC

#+RESULTS: test-table-script
| a | b | c |
|---+---+---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 |
| 3 | 4 | 7 |

Comments are welcome -- and I hope that this is useful.

Sincerely, Mark.


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