Hi Chuck,
thank you *very much* for this answer!
I was indeed wondering what was the entry point into the org source
for this. `org-babel-ref-resolve' is where I should start. I'm still
relatively new to emacs-lisp and do not know how to instrument the
code in order to trace all calls (which would probably have solved my
problem).
Anyway, with my version (8.2.10) of org-mode, I had to redefine
`org-babel-read' rather than `org-babel--string-to-number'. Will
update and see where it goes.
In any case, I will consider this problem as solved! Thanks again,
Sébastien
2017-01-20 4:49 GMT+01:00 Charles C. Berry <ccbe...@ucsd.edu>:
> On Thu, 19 Jan 2017, Sébastien Brisard wrote:
>
>> Thanks Charles for this answer. Let me state the problem more clearly.
>> Number-like cells *are* converted to numbers (as best illustrated by
>> the example below (see the use of numberp), which might incur accuracy
>> loss (see below, the first row has a lot of significant digits).
>> I am not interested in the number representation of these cells, only
>> the string matters for my application. Due to this accuracy loss,
>> converting back the number to a string is not an option for me...
>>
>> Any ideas? Thanks!
>
>
> The usual resolution of table references will eventually use
> `org-babel--string-to-number' to do what its name suggests.
>
> You can write an elisp function to handle references as you wish and call
> them from :var arguments.
>
> A hackish way to do this for your case is to quash the action of
> `org-babel--string-to-number':
>
> #+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp
> (defun get-ref-strings-as-is (ref)
> (cl-letf (((symbol-function 'org-babel--string-to-number)
> (lambda (x) x)))
> (org-babel-ref-resolve ref)))
> #+END_SRC
>
> #+header: :var table=(get-ref-strings-as-is "table20170119") #+BEGIN_SRC
> emacs-lisp :colnames yes :results pp
> table
> #+END_SRC
>
> #+RESULTS:
> : (("row1" "12345678901234567890")
> : ("row2" "a")
> : ("row3" "b")
> : ("row4" "c"))
>
> You can look at `org-babel-ref-resolve' to get some ideas on how to do this
> more artfully.
>
>> Sébastien
>>
>> ===== begin example =====
>> #+NAME: table20170119
>> | col1 | col2 |
>> |------+----------------------|
>> | row1 | 12345678901234567890 |
>> | row2 | a |
>> | row3 | b |
>> | row4 | c |
>>
>
> HTH,
>
> Chuck
