executing shortcodes through get_the_excerpt();

Is this in the wrong place on the forum? Should I repost in another section?

OK. Well, for the record, here are things I’ve tried. Please let me know if anything doesn’t look right so I can try again.

Replacing the string replace function in the get_the_excerpt function (I commented out the bit of trim_excerpt which gets rid of script etc):

function improved_trim_excerpt($text) {
        global $post;
        if ( '' == $text ) {
                $text = get_the_content('');
                /*$text = apply_filters('the_content', $text);
                 $text = str_replace('\]\]\>', ']]>', $text);
                 $text = preg_replace('@<script[^>]*?>.*?</script>@si', '', $text);
                 $text = strip_tags($text, '<p>'); */
                $excerpt_length = 80;
                $words = explode(' ', $text, $excerpt_length + 1);
                if (count($words)> $excerpt_length) {
                        array_pop($words);
                        array_push($words, '[...]');
                        $text = implode(' ', $words);
                }
        }
        return $text;
}

remove_filter('get_the_excerpt', 'wp_trim_excerpt');
add_filter('get_the_excerpt', 'improved_trim_excerpt');

I also tried this, which I saw suggested in a few places:

add_filter( 'get_the_excerpt', 'shortcode_unautop');
add_filter( 'get_the_excerpt', 'do_shortcode');

And I tried this, with and without an echo:

do_shortcode(get_the_excerpt());

None of these are working for me. I will either dig out the reason, or create a workaround which fulfils my requirement, and post it back here.

I tried that- it just echoes the unexecuted shortcode, like this:

[shortcode] the text of the excerpt

Will keep digging when I have a chance…