RE: [office-formula] Re: Excel's YEARFRAC algorithm

[Doug Mahugh <Doug.Mahugh@microsoft.com>]

Hi David,

I'm not sure what the intent of Mode=3 was, but I'll try to track down the answer and also get somebody to take a close look at how the Python comments compare to corresponding details in Excel's YEARFRAC.

FYI, I'm traveling through Tuesday with limited email access.  I won't be able to make tomorrow's call, unfortunately.

Regards,
Doug

-----Original Message-----
From: David A. Wheeler [mailto:dwheeler@dwheeler.com]
Sent: Friday, June 20, 2008 1:21 PM
To: Doug Mahugh
Cc: office-formula@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [office-formula] Re: Excel's YEARFRAC algorithm

Doug Mahugh:
> David,
>
> I've finished testing and concluded that the VBA sample I had provided does indeed match Excel's behavior in all cases.

That's excellent news.  The Ruby story is interesting, but I don't think we need
to worry about it for now.

> So we can proceed on the basis that we know what Excel is doing, and your Python sample and my VBA sample both mirror Excel's actual YEARFRAC implementation accurately.

That _should_ be true. Of course, it's possible that none of the test cases exercise
a difference, though that seems improbable.

What I did is turn the Python code into an English spec, which SHOULD be the same.  There's a risk that this dropped something important, of course.  Care to take a look at the "Basis" section's English text and confirm that the definition is correct (at least for YEARFRAC, but really, we want it correct period)?

One oddity: The Excel code has special "Mode=3" handling that is quite odd - is that just dead code, or is it important for something?

--- David A. Wheeler

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