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Very cool ideas. I'm surprised that the article didn't mention R1C1 mode [0], which seems to be a big step towards the "intensional" view of a formula. 0. http
by jkaptur 7y ago
Very cool ideas. I'm surprised that the article didn't mention R1C1 mode [0], which seems to be a big step towards the "intensional" view of a formula.
0. https://bettersolutions.com/excel/formulas/cell-references-a1-r1c1-notation.htm https://bettersolutions.com/excel/formulas/cell-references-a....
- gklitt 7y agoI had the same thought -- it seems like many of these ideas overlap heavily with R1C1 mode, which is already how Excel internally manages formula copy-paste. Joel Spolsky explaining how it works: https://youtu.be/0nbkaYsR94c?t=567 https://youtu.be/0nbkaYsR94c?t=567
- zokier 7y agoI was thinking that the article overall felt bit out of touch with what Excel does these days, then I checked the date on the date on the linked original IEEE article and its from 1990, 30 years ago. No wonder it is bit difficult to place in modern context. "A while back" indeed.
- laumars 7y agoR1C1 is even older still. It was first released in 1982 as the the cell addressing for Microsoft Multiplan (so we are talking pre-Excel). Microsoft only later adopted A1 formulas to fall in line with VisCal and Lotus 1-2-3.
- maxerickson 7y agoYeah. Here's the fibonacci example in a column: 0 1 =R[-2]C+R[-1]C =R[-2]C+R[-1]C =R[-2]C+R[-1]C =R[-2]C+R[-1]C (at least, how Libre Office Calc shows it)
- juped 7y agoYes, spreadsheets use relative references and transform them to absolute references as a display format.
- montebicyclelo 7y agoSeems the author of the article has now addressed this: > It’s been pointed out that you can get something close to this with R1C1 notation. R[-2]C is the cell two columns to the left on the same row. This notation is not as general; for example we can write left(F+left F). I'd argue it's more readable too.