Re: [office-formula] Constraints and infix ^

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

Patrick Durusau wrote:
 > Besides, if the formula group wants a defined set of results, then the
 > results aren't by any means "implementation defined," we are simply
 > offering a choice to implementations. They cannot chose, for example,
 > the weather report that David suggested.
 >
 > Yes?

I would say: "no".

Which suggests that we need to define what the term 
"implementation-defined" means in the document.

I'm with Rob Weir on this one; Rob says:
 > It is perfectly legitimate to say "implementation defined" and also
 > specify additional restrictions.  For example, ISO C++ says that the
 > length of a character is implementation-defined, but it
 > must be at least 8-bits long.

I would say that the result of calculating 0^0 is 
implementation-defined, but must be one of short list of values (1 or an 
Error, at least).

Obviously, this means that a spreadsheet that uses 0^0 may produce 
different values on different spreadsheets.  Such variation is 
undesirable, but it's better to document and limit that variation, as 
compared to requiring a specific result that we can't get agreement on. 
  In particular, a spreadsheet document creator can work around this, 
once they know that it's an issue.

Thankfully, there are lots of spreadsheets that don't need to compute 
0^0 :-).

--- David A. Wheeler