Re: na=\"nil\" in ob-R.elo

[Jeremie Juste]

Hello,

Thanks again for reporting this. With the attached patch I'll remove
nil replacement for NA. 

>From 90881079d431a8af3cba5be14ecf882735ed7a6a Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Jeremie Juste <jeremiejuste@gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 6 Feb 2021 20:50:00 +0100
Subject: [PATCH] For :results value, return empty string instead of nil

---
 lisp/ob-R.el | 2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/lisp/ob-R.el b/lisp/ob-R.el
index f6fa9a417..981f21119 100644
--- a/lisp/ob-R.el
+++ b/lisp/ob-R.el
@@ -349,7 +349,7 @@ Each member of this list is a list with three members:
                         {
                             tfile<-tempfile()
                             write.table(object, file=tfile, sep=\"\\t\",
-                                        na=\"nil\",row.names=%s,col.names=%s,
+                                        na=\"\",row.names=%s,col.names=%s,
                                         quote=FALSE)
                             file.rename(tfile,transfer.file)
                         },
-- 
2.20.1

Best regards,
Jeremie

On Saturday, 16 Jan 2021 at 00:19, Berry, Charles" via "General discussions 
about Org-mode. wrote:
>> On Jan 14, 2021, at 3:42 PM, Brett Presnell <presnell@member.fsf.org> wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> Probably a silly question, but in ob-R.el, what is the reason for
>> setting na=\"nil\" when defining org-babel-R-write-object-command?  Is
>> this an elisp compatibility thing?
>> 
>
> I don't get it either. The value corresponding to the NA becomes a string in 
> emacs-lisp whether \"nil\" or \"\" is used.
>
> So when passed to elisp via a :post header referencing an emacs-lisp src 
> block, its treated as a string.   
>
>> Regardless, I generally (always?) want na=\"\" for this, so I am finding
>> all those "nil"s very annoying, and the only way that I see to defeat
>> them is to redefine org-babel-R-write-object-command.
>> 
>> If there is no reason for the current behavior (doubtful I know) and if
>> I am not missing an obvious work-around, then I would like to suggest
>> changing this behavior.  Otherwise, would it be feasible to add an
>> option for R code blocks (:nastring?) where one could specify the NA
>> replacement string?
>> 
>> What do you think?  It's easy to suggest I know and certainly beyond my
>> elisp coding skills at present, but I am supposing that someone more
>> fluent in elisp could do this safely without too much trouble.
>> 
>
> You can use a :post header to customize outputs like this to make them more 
> pleasing. Or just use your own `org-babel-R-write-object-command'.
>
> Adding another header arg qualifies as feature creep and in this case would 
> require non-trivial work to implement.
>
> HTH,
>
> Chuck
>

-- 
Jeremie Juste