Help, How to preserve leading zeros of table cells when using orgtable_to_dataframe

[yssource]

• demo

I know this is a problem about org-mode table, instead of orgtable-to-dataframe. But, I'd like to get help from you. Thanks.

There are string-type numbers in 'id' column originally, but it is always interpreted as numbers by org-babel. I wonder how keep those leading zeros in org-babel?

demo

id	name	age
0001	Apollo	16
0002	Bmw	16

#+name: TBL
|   id | name   | age |
|------|--------|-----|
| 0001 | Apollo |  16 |
| 0002 | Bmw    |  16 |

#+BEGIN_SRC python :results output :var tbl=TBL
  print(tbl)
#+END_SRC
#+RESULTS:
: [[1, 'Apollo', 16], [2, 'Bmw', 16]]

[dfeich]

Hi

This is indeed a problem of the org-babel code that translates the table into the source block. You can expand the source block with org-babel-expand-src-block to see how the variable is passed over in the code.

This results in this:

tbl=[[1, "Apollo", 16], [2, "Bmw", 16]]
print(tbl)

The only slightly ugly workaround (besides changing the babel source) is to put the numbers in the ID column in quotes.

Cheers, Derek

[yssource]

Thanks. I find a way to solve my problem. Though It's not the proper place opening the issue here, maybe It will help others who have the same problem.

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp
  (defun my/org-babel--string-to-number (string)
    "If STRING represents a number return its value.
  Otherwise return nil."
    (and (string-match-p "\\`-?\\([1-9]\\|[0-9]*\\.\\)[0-9]*\\'" string)
         (string-to-number string)))

  (advice-add 'org-babel--string-to-number :override 'my/org-babel--string-to-number)

  ;; test
  (mapcar (lambda (string)
            (and (my/org-babel--string-to-number string)
                 t))
          '("001" "0.1" "00.1" "100" "100.1"))
  ;; => (nil t t t t)
#+END_SRC

#+RESULTS:
| nil | t | t | t | t |