Re: Bug or not a bug? dot expansion in ob-shell

[Jack Kamm]

Hi Tom,

Tom Gillespie <address@hidden> writes:

> As with many things in emacs, I sometimes feel like I'm loosing my
> mind, or loosing track of just exactly what variables are set

You're not losing your mind. After some further testing I find that
you're right, and my understanding of the situation was incorrect.

The reason I got confused was the initial example that started this
thread:

> #+begin_src sh
>   echo .
> #+end_src
> 
> #+RESULTS:
> : 0

Which looks like it's returning the exit code. However, it turns out
that this is just a coincidence, and it's an entirely unrelated bug.

If I had read the thread more carefully, I would have seen Bastien had
already noted this here:
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-orgmode/2020-02/msg00716.html

I fear my confusion of the issues lead to some misinformed comments on
my part. Sorry about that. I think I wasn't the only commenter confused
about this...

Anyways, it seems the current behavior of ob-shell blocks is:

- If no ":results" specified: returns the output, transformed to a
  table. Same as the old ":results value".
- If ":results value" explicitly specified: returns the exit code. This
  is a change from the old default behavior.

I can see why you, and other regular users of ob-shell, would be annoyed
by this change of behavior.

Now that I understand what's going on, I think it would be better to
stick with the old behavior (no exit code), just fixing the original bug
that prompted this thread.