Re: [office-formula] row-wise order of evaluation (was:[office-formula] Groups - OpenDocument Formula Specification2008-10-10 (ODT) (OpenDocument-formula-20081010.odt) uploaded)

[Eike Rathke <erack@sun.com>]

Hi Andreas,

On Monday, 2008-10-13 11:41:56 -0600, Andreas J. Guelzow wrote:

> > > Could you elaborate on "Because the result is affected by the order of
> > > values, applications shall evaluate arguments in the order given and
> > > range reference and array arguments row-wise starting from top left."
> > 
> > The term  (values[i] / (1+Rate)^i)  delivers a position-dependent
> > result.
> 
> I understand (and understood) that. I do not understand why this
> requires that the _arguments_be_evaluated_in_the_order_given (versus
> just that the function acts on the given sequence of arguments.  But
> perhaps you mean something different with that than the usage of the
> expression "evaluate arguments" in the normal context of programming.

Probably just due to the fact that I'm not a native English speaker.
What I was referring is that the arguments must be processed from left
to right, which for me is "in the order given". Maybe there's a better
wording for this to clarify?

  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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