Thanks for the great suggestions (Nick, Nick, and Eric)!
Here are the two functions that finally do what I wanted. I added the second function to get a specific result.
#+RANDOM: tfjkdsla jfkdsa
#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp :results value
; suggested by Nicolas Goaziou <address@hidden> (defun jk-org-kwds () (org-element-map (org-element-parse-buffer 'element) 'keyword (lambda (keyword) (cons (org-element-property :key keyword)
(org-element-property :value keyword)))))
(defun jk-org-kwd (KEYWORD) "get the value of a KEYWORD in the form of #+KEYWORD: value" (cdr (assoc KEYWORD (jk-org-kwds))))
(jk-org-kwd "RANDOM") #+END_SRC
#+RESULTS: : tfjkdsla jfkdsa
A less orgish way I worked out last night after browsing through org.el is:
#+ANDREWID: jkitchin
#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp :results value
(defun jk-get-file-keyword (KEYWORD) "get the value from a line like this #+OPTION: value in a file." (interactive) (let ((case-fold-search t) (re (format "^#\\+%s:[ \t]+\\([^\t\n]+\\)" KEYWORD)))
(if (not (save-excursion (or (re-search-forward re nil t) (re-search-backward re nil t)))) (error (format "No line containing #+%s: value found" KEYWORD))) (match-string 1)))
(jk-get-file-keyword "ANDREWID") #+END_SRC
#+RESULTS: : jkitchin
This is pretty awesome!
John
----------------------------------- John Kitchin Associate Professor
Doherty Hall A207F Department of Chemical Engineering Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213 412-268-7803 http://kitchingroup.cheme.cmu.edu