[Orgmode] Re: Org-Babel and Ledger

[Sébastien Vauban]

Hi Eric,

"Eric Schulte" wrote:
> Sébastien Vauban <address@hidden> writes:
>>
>>>>> As you can see, the tables are completely wrongly made, because they're
>>>>> based on spaces ("à la Awk") and not on fixed position of fields ("à la
>>>>> Cut").
>>>>>
>>>>> What can I do about this?
>>>>>
>>>>> - Post-process every ledger command with some awk or cut command that
>>>>>   will do whatever is needed
>>>
>>>     (org-table-convert-region (point-min) (point-max))
>>>
>>> I would recommend this approach over shell-script post-processing.
>>
>> That seems not to work for me, as input data is, for example:
>>
>> 09-Aug-21 CHEQUE : 9953055                    Expenses:Unknown               
>>                      166.70 EUR            166.70 EUR
>> 09-Sep-17 CHEQUE : 7691785                    Expenses:Unknown               
>>                      100.00 EUR            266.70 EUR
>> 09-Oct-16 REMISE CHEQUE N 8686318 001 105     Expenses:Unknown               
>>                     -525.00 EUR           -258.30 EUR
>>
>> and as =org-table-convert-region= can't convert fixed positioned fields
>> (when SPC are used instead of TAB):
>>
>> (org-table-convert-region beg0 end0 &optional separator)
>>
>> Convert region to a table.
>> The region goes from beg0 to end0, but these borders will be moved
>> slightly, to make sure a beginning of line in the first line is included.
>>
>> separator specifies the field separator in the lines.  It can have the
>> following values:
>>
>> '(4)     Use the comma as a field separator
>> '(16)    Use a TAB as field separator
>> integer  When a number, use that many spaces as field separator
>> nil      When nil, the command tries to be smart and figure out the
>>          separator in the following way:
>>          - when each line contains a TAB, assume TAB-separated material
>>          - when each line contains a comma, assume CSV material
>>          - else, assume one or more SPACE characters as separator.
>>
>> Should that function be smarter, or do I still need pre-processing, then?
>
> Neither, notice that if you pass an integer as the third argument to
> org-table-convert-region it will parse on that many consecutive spaces. The
> following works for me, on the case your provided although I suppose it may
> not work on all cases.
>
> #+results: ledger-output
> #+begin_example 
>   09-Aug-21 CHEQUE : 9953055                    Expenses:Unknown              
>                       166.70 EUR            166.70 EUR
>   09-Sep-17 CHEQUE : 7691785                    Expenses:Unknown              
>                       100.00 EUR            266.70 EUR
>   09-Oct-16 REMISE CHEQUE N 8686318 001 105     Expenses:Unknown              
>                      -525.00 EUR           -258.30 EUR
> #+end_example
>
> #+begin_src emacs-lisp :var ledger=ledger-output
>   (with-temp-buffer
>     (insert ledger)
>     (message ledger)
>     (org-table-convert-region (point-min) (point-max) 2)
>     (org-table-to-lisp))
> #+end_src
>
> #+results:
> | 09-Aug-21 CHEQUE : 9953055                | Expenses:Unknown | 166.70 EUR  
> | 166.70 EUR  |
> | 09-Sep-17 CHEQUE : 7691785                | Expenses:Unknown | 100.00 EUR  
> | 266.70 EUR  |
> | 09-Oct-16 REMISE CHEQUE N 8686318 001 105 | Expenses:Unknown | -525.00 EUR 
> | -258.30 EUR |
>
> Hope this helps -- Eric

Of course, it does, Eric!

I misunderstood the above DOCSTRING because, IMHO, it's not that clear:

"When a number, use that many spaces as field separator" meant, for me, that
if using the number 2 (as you do), it would consider a new field every 2
consecutive spaces, and leave me with a lot of empty fields...

In fact, it should be written "consider any amount of whitespaces (above the
given number) as a field separator" or something like that, if you understand
me right.

I was blocked on the fact that every 2 spaces would be a new field separator,
and not every string of 2 or more spaces...

Thanks a lot (once again)!!

Best regards,
  Seb

-- 
Sébastien Vauban