though, in the spirit of "no good deed goes unpunished": ---- #+name: foo | a | b | c |
#+begin_src awk :var a=foo
BEGIN{ print a; }
#+end_src
----
gives an error (and, ':var a="this is a test"' doesn't behave as one
might expect). i haven't looked at ob-*.el enough to know the patterns
used to wrap up various forms of variables into different languages.
