Re: [office-formula] BITAND, etc. - what about bit limits/sign bit?Gnumeric folks, willing to change what they do?

["David A. Wheeler" <dwheeler@dwheeler.com>]

Andreas J. Guelzow wrote:
> What does MS Excel do?
>   
Excel has no ability to perform bit operations at all, amazingly enough.
This is one of its glaring weaknesses.  There are few that have bit 
operations
(Quattro Pro does).

Jody, Andreas: Any idea why it's limited to 32 bits?  Does anyone
DEPEND on that behavior?  Perhaps that's something that can be asked
on a Gnumeric mailing list?  I'd like to NOT require this 32-bit limitation,
if that is reasonable.

Excel does have a few number conversion functions,
like BIN2DEC.  In them, the topmost bit of the 10th largest digit
of a non-base-10 number is considered the sign bit, and the entire
value is considered two's complement.

Yes, it really is that weird.  No doubt to support all the
10-bit, 30-bit, and 40-bit systems that are on the market today :-).
At least there are actual computers that use 32 bits.

--- David A. Wheeler