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The command M-x table-capture captures plain text in a region and turns it into a table. Unlike M-x table-recognize (see Table Recognition), the original text does not need to have a table appearance; it only needs to have a logical table-like structure.
For example, suppose we have the following numbers, which are divided into three lines and separated horizontally by commas:
1, 2, 3, 4 5, 6, 7, 8 , 9, 10
Invoking M-x table-capture on that text produces this table:
+-----+-----+-----+-----+ |1 |2 |3 |4 | +-----+-----+-----+-----+ |5 |6 |7 |8 | +-----+-----+-----+-----+ | |9 |10 | | +-----+-----+-----+-----+
M-x table-release does the opposite: it converts a table back to plain text, removing its cell borders.
One application of this pair of commands is to edit a text in layout. Look at the following three paragraphs:
table-capture is a powerful command.
Here are some things it can do:
Parse Cell Items Using row and column delimiter regexps,
it parses the specified text area and
extracts cell items into a table.
Applying table-capture to a region containing the above text,
with empty strings for the column and row delimiter regexps, creates a
table with a single cell like the following one.
+----------------------------------------------------------+ |table-capture is a powerful command. | |Here are some things it can do: | | | |Parse Cell Items Using row and column delimiter regexps,| | it parses the specified text area and | | extracts cell items into a table. | +----------------------------------------------------------+
We can then use the cell splitting commands (see Cell Commands) to subdivide the table so that each paragraph occupies a cell:
+----------------------------------------------------------+ |table-capture is a powerful command. | |Here are some things it can do: | +-----------------+----------------------------------------+ |Parse Cell Items | Using row and column delimiter regexps,| | | it parses the specified text area and | | | extracts cell items into a table. | +-----------------+----------------------------------------+
Each cell can now be edited independently without affecting the layout of other cells. When finished, we can invoke M-x table-release to convert the table back to plain text.
Next: Table Misc, Previous: Table Rows and Columns, Up: Text Based Tables [Contents][Index]