Re: BUG: org-table: table option “:missing” not working (in ob-gnuplot.el)

[Ihor Radchenko]

Nicolas Goaziou <mail@nicolasgoaziou.fr> writes:

> I'm not sure. I wrote this some years ago. I guess the rationale at that
> time was that it didn't feel useful to apply a format to an empty cell.
> For example, if you use `:fmt "$%s$"', I assume you wouldn't want to get
> "$$" in otherwise empty cells.

Also makes sense.

At this point, third-party code is likely to rely on the existing logic,
so I do not see any reason to insist on changing org-table.

To avoid confusion, can we change the docstring explicitly saying that
empty cells are ignored? (see the attached)

Best,
Ihor

>From 60365a164147dfc71f0047661c143b54064a459b Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
Message-Id: 
<60365a164147dfc71f0047661c143b54064a459b.1633060596.git.yantar92@gmail.com>
From: Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2021 11:40:54 +0800
Subject: [PATCH] orgtbl-to-generic: Mention that :fmt is ignored for empty
 cells

* lisp/org-table.el (orgtbl-to-generic): Amend docstring mentioning
that :fmt is ignored for empty table cells.
---
 lisp/org-table.el | 3 +++
 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+)

diff --git a/lisp/org-table.el b/lisp/org-table.el
index 89c57fb06..3fed15054 100644
--- a/lisp/org-table.el
+++ b/lisp/org-table.el
@@ -5649,6 +5649,9 @@ (defun orgtbl-to-generic (table params)
 
     (:fmt (2 \"$%s$\" 4 (lambda (c) (format \"$%s$\" c))))
 
+  The format is ignored for empty fields.  Use :raw t with non-nil
+  :backend option to force formatting empty fields.
+
 :hlstart :hllstart :hlend :hllend :hsep :hlfmt :hllfmt :hfmt
 
  Same as above, specific for the header lines in the table.
-- 
2.32.0