Re: R terminal output does not match src block output due to ">" character in results

[John Hendy]

Ok, after more searching, I found that this is a duplicate issue
that's already been discussed. Not sure why all my incantations didn't
bring me to the reddit post or mailing list from google, but simply
searching "prompt blocks R" on r/orgmode directly got me here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/orgmode/comments/pt3em4/source_block_modifying_format_of_results_r/

And that links to a patch:
https://gist.github.com/gtuckerkellogg/e356d20497cfdc8e4fc683412e320e3e

And that points to this mailing list thread where the topic has already come up:
https://list.orgmode.org/87zgxc42qg.fsf@gmail.com/

It appears the discussion/fix is stalled out at this point?

Best regards,
John


On Tue, Jan 11, 2022 at 4:42 PM John Hendy <jw.hendy@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I just ran into an issue where results look fine in the terminal, but
> not in the results of a source block. I can't share the real example
> as it's work confidential, but a couple of rows across 7 columns looks
> like this in the terminal:
>
> #+begin_example terminal
> dbGetQuery(con, paste0("SELECT TOP 2 * FROM table"))
> 1       <NA>             NA            NA <NA>         FALSE      0          5
> 2       <NA>             NA            NA <NA>         FALSE      0          5
> #+end_example
>
> When I use this with :exports results :results output drawer in my
> document, I get:
> #+begin_example src
> 1       <
>             NA            NA <
>         FALSE      0          5
> 2       <
>             NA            NA <
>         FALSE      0          5
> #+end_example
>
> I had an entirely separate email written and about to send, when it
> dawned on me that the > character is the same as the R terminal prompt
> and might be the cause.
>
> My first attempt to reproduce was unsuccessful:
>
> #+begin_src R :session :exports results :results output drawer
> df <- data.frame(
>   x = letters[1:3],
>   y = c(1, 2, NA),
>   z = c("x", NA,"z"))
> df
> #+end_src
>
> #+RESULTS:
> :results:
>   x  y    z
> 1 a  1    x
> 2 b  2 <NA>
> 3 c NA    z
> :end:
>
> I'm not sure if it's about more columns or more rows, but this does the trick:
>
> #+begin_src R :session :exports results :results output drawer
> df <- data.frame(
>   x = letters[1:7],
>   y = c(1, 2, NA, NA, NA, NA, NA),
>   z = c("x", NA, NA, NA, NA, NA, "z"),
>   a = c(1, rep(NA, 6)))
> df
> #+end_src
>
> #+RESULTS:
> :results:
>   x  y    z  a
> 1 a  1    x  1
> 2 b  2 <
> NA
> 3 c NA <
> NA
> ### ... shortened
> :end:
>
> If you comment out the line with z=, it works again... but that's the
> column with all the <NA> values. Then again, if you end the data.frame
> at z and don't add column a, it *also* works despite the presence of
> many <NA> values.
>
> #+RESULTS:
> :results:
>   x  y    z
> 1 a  1    x
> 2 b  2 <NA>
> 3 c NA <NA>
> ### ... shortened
> :end:
>
> I'm imagining there's a... "parser?" somewhere that typically strips
> off the command prompt from the results perhaps (and recall some vague
> memory of someone telling me this years ago on the list). Is there a
> way to stop this from happening?
>
> Would this line be responsible, or something else?
> https://github.com/bzg/org-mode/blob/main/lisp/ob-R.el#L453
>
>
> Many thanks,
> John