Re: [O] Preserving the geometry of a table range

[Jarmo Hurri]

Greetings Michael.

I can try. Here is an example of the desired low-level functionality
with a simple function. The lookup functions would be built on this.

Does this help?

* an example of low level functionality
  Here is an example of an elisp function working on a range as a list
  of rows. This one first finds the product of the elements on each
  row, and then sums up these products.
#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp
(defun sum-row-prods (rows)
  (apply '+ (mapcar (lambda (row) (apply '* row)) rows)))
#+END_SRC

#+RESULTS:
: sum-row-prods

  Then here we have a table in which the element at @4$1 is given by
  applying the function sum-row-prods to a specific list of
  lists. This works already in org mode, since in the formula for @4$1
  the list of lists is given as a constant. The formula for @4$2
  illustrates the desired functionality, that is, being able to apply
  the function sum-row-prods to range @address@hidden The result should be
#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp
(sum-row-prods '((2 3) (4 5)))
#+END_SRC

#+RESULTS:
: 26

  but now it naturally gives an error, since the argument to
  sum-row-prods is a list, not a list of lists (rows).

  |  a |      b |
  |----+--------|
  |  2 |      3 |
  |  4 |      5 |
  | 10 | #ERROR |
  #+tblfm: @4$1='(sum-row-prods '((-4 1) (-2 -7)));N::@4$2='(sum-row-prods 
'(@address@hidden));N

  I don't know what the new syntax for referring to a range as a list
  of rows should look like.

--

Jarmo