[Orgmode] org-entry-get bugs etc.

[Samuel Wales]

I ran into a bug in which org-entry-get returns the wrong
value.  It brought up some other points.

  1) org-entry-get of "TODO" returns the wrong value when
     there is a lower case version of a todo kw on a
     headline.  Example:

     * neowhen

     I have "NEOWHEN" as a todo kw.

     What it returns is "neowhen".  What I think it should
     return is the value for a blank state.  Currently, this
     value is nil.

  2) This is the 5th bug that I have reported of this type.
     In all 5 cases, the lower case version of a todo kw at
     the beginning of a headline caused incorrect behavior.
     This suggests separate matches.  At least as a
     possibility.

     This in turn suggests to me that it might be possible
     to refactor org.  By this I mean create a wrapper to do
     the matching and call that wrapper in all of those
     places.  I wish I could help here, but I cannot.

  3) For the user, I think it is more convenient to use
     org-entry-get for metadata than to parse manually.
     This is a useful function.

  4) Perhaps Lisp keywords can be allowed instead of strings
     for speed.  For example,

       (org-entry-get point-or-marker :todo)

     Instead of:

       (org-entry-get point-or-marker "TODO")

     I don't know if it would be significant.

  5) This isn't directly related, but the value for a blank
     state is currently nil, not "".  I have not thought
     about this deeply, but as nil is not a string, it is a
     special case (i.e. the only state that is not a
     string).  In my experience, special cases in return
     values cause complicated code, because calling code
     needs to special-case the special case instead of
     merely composing, funcalling, or applying.  Perhaps
     it's too late to change that.  Or perhaps there is a
     special reason to use nil.  But seems worth mentioning
     just in case it triggers an idea.

Thanks.


Samuel

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