RE: [office-formula] Expression Calculation - a fundamental issue

["Dennis E. Hamilton" <dennis.hamilton@acm.org>]

Alternatively, how the notional values/results are determined could be
explained along with the descriptions in section 3-4 and probably the
introductory part of 5.  I agree that it is probably better to have the
syntax before describing the way the syntax is interpreted in determining
what a formula is for.

We still need something about processing model, I think, though it may be
more about the context and dependencies that any hosting must provide for
and deal with.

 - Dennis  

PS: One of my favorite books that deals with this sort of thing [Samuel
Harbison and Guy Steele, Jr., C: A Reference Manual, ed.4 (1995)], does this
in the following progression:

1. ...
   1.5 Syntax Notation

2. Lexical Elements
   2.1 Character Set
   ...
   2.7 Constants

5. Types
   5.1 Integer Types
   ...
   5.4 Array Types
   ...
   5.11 Type Compatibility

6. Conversions and Representations
   6.1 Representations
   6.2 Conversions
   6.3 The Usual Conversions
   ...

7. Expressions
   7.1 Objects, Lvalues, and Designators (sort of values and references)
   7.2 Expressions and Precedence
   7.3 Primary Expressions (the basic operands including constants, cell
references, function references and "(" expression ")")
   ...
   7.6 Binary Operator Expressions
   7.7 Logical Operator Expressions
   ...
   7.12 Order of Evaluation

9. Functions
   ...
   9.5 ParameterPassing Conventions
   9.6 Agreement of Parameters
   9.7 Function Return Types
   9.8 Agreement of Return Types

There are statements instead of "formula" but in some sense, the "="
expression form is the top "statement" construct of OpenFormula.

Then the basic sets of standard (i.e., library) functions are defined in the
remaining chapters of the book.

There's an International Standard for the language and its library too, but
I haven't glanced at it in a long time.

-----Original Message-----
From: Patrick Durusau [mailto:patrick@durusau.net] 
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office-formula/201001/msg00065.html
Sent: Saturday, January 23, 2010 09:27
To: office-formula@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [office-formula] Expression Calculation - a fundamental issue

Greetings!

I have been trying to recast the Expression Calculation 2.2 with an eye 
on 2.3 Non-Scalar Evaluation and suddenly realized that I don't have the 
necessary components defined to write those sections.

That is to say that the syntax I need to reference for say precedence, 
doesn't occur until chapter 4.

Is there any reason why we could not put this material at the end of 
chapter 4?

Where we could then say:

The rules for evaluation of expressions are:

...

) Operators shall be evaluated with the associativity and precedence as 
defined by Table 1 (insert reference)

etc.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Patrick

-- 
Patrick Durusau
patrick@durusau.net
Chair, V1 - US TAG to JTC 1/SC 34
Convener, JTC 1/SC 34/WG 3 (Topic Maps)
Editor, OpenDocument Format TC (OASIS), Project Editor ISO/IEC 26300
Co-Editor, ISO/IEC 13250-1, 13250-5 (Topic Maps)


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