Reference vs. ReferenceList

[Eike Rathke <erack@sun.com>]

Hi,

In "4.6 Reference" we say

| A reference contains 0 or more areas, in order. Each area refers to
| a cuboid of cells called a range. A special case is a simple range,
| a one-area reference.

and so on.

That doesn't hold. In fact that is the definition of a ReferenceList,
the result of the
"6.3.12 Infix Operator Reference Concatenation ("~") (aka Union)".

Only a selected subset of functions takes a ReferenceList as argument,
whereas we defined all that take a range reference with a Reference
parameter.

I propose the following:

Split "4.6 Reference" into "4.6 Reference" and "4.7 ReferenceList" and
make the necessary distinction.

Add a syntax definition
5.9 Reference List
ReferenceList ::= Reference (ReferenceConcatentationOp Reference)*

For the functions that do take ReferenceList arguments (I have a list of
those since I implemented that ;-)  explicitly change Reference to
ReferenceList.

Change 6.3.12 to return ReferenceList.

Opinions?

  Eike

-- 
Automatic string conversions considered dangerous. They are the GOTO statements
of spreadsheets.  --Robert Weir on the OpenDocument formula subcommittee's list.

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