How can I coerce numbers in E notation to strings?
reddit / emacs

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vfclists · 2022-08-20 05:16

#+NAME: TableName
    | Task Id  | File Name |
    |----------+-----------|
    | 9a9022f5 | one       |
    | 9643747b | two       |
    | 45e6f546 | three     |
    | 45e20549 | four      |
    | 3bfcf5bd | five      |
    | 70f9561e | six       |

    #+BEGIN_SRC elisp :var tbl=TableName :results output raw
       (let ((somevar '()))
         (dolist (row tbl)
           (add-to-list 'somevar (append (list (nth 1 row)) (nth 0
row))))
         (print (alist-get "four" somevar nil nil 's-equals-p)))
    #+END_SRC

    #+RESULTS:

    1.0e+INF

After further tests with a variety of numbers it is clear that emacs
see a sequence of numbers with an `e` in the middle as a number in E
notation format.

How can I coerce the values in the columns to be seen as strings?

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[deleted] · 2022-08-20 06:00

[deleted]

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organic-bookworm · 2022-08-20 08:32

I found out org babel processes table cells with [`org-babel-
read`](https://github.com/emacs-straight/org-
mode/blob/00adad9357b9123a7b11ecf12c148a5196debcb7/lisp/ob-
core.el#L3111).

You could wrap strings in double quotes in `TableName` (`"45e20549"`)
to avoid casting to numbers in the first place.