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> If someone types MARCH1, DEC1, OCT4, SEPT1 into a column, why should Excel not treat these as dates? It should treat these as dates, unless told otherwise. B

> If someone types MARCH1, DEC1, OCT4, SEPT1 into a column, why should Excel not treat these as dates? It should treat these as dates, unless told otherwise. But Excel goes one step further, and throws away the text you originally typed in. That means, if you type "DEC1" into a spreadsheet, see it looks stupid, and change the data type of that cell to "Text", then it's too late, and Excel will show "37226". It has destroyed the original data and replaced it with the numeric equivalent of the date. The data type of the spreadsheet cells should be a display format only. The text you typed in (or loaded from a CSV file) should be preserved, and the data type of the cell should only dictate how that is treated and displayed, not how it is stored.

FabHK 6y ago
Excel does that, largely: cells have a datatype, a value, and a format (among other properties). Changing the format leaves the value unchanged. However, when you input something into a cell, Excel has to parse it and decide what value and datatype to assign to it. That is just inevitable, and the same everywhere: in Python, `x = 3` assigns an integer, `x = 3.` a floating point, and `x='3'` a string. Similarly hints (or explicit specifications of type) are possible in Excel. However, given that, what you typed originally is not recoverable anywhere (Python doesn't record whether you wrote `x=3.` or `x = 3.00`, why should it?). So, to the extent that it is reasonable, Excel does what you request, and to the extent it doesn't do it, it's not reasonable, I'd say: A cell need not maintain the original pre-parsing input.
ChrisLomont 6y ago
> The text you typed in (or loaded from a CSV file) should be preserved That’s even worse, since a user assumes the cell holds what it shows. Excel, for example, auto completes entries, which is extremely useful for data entry, and for accuracy. If it only held the few characters entered, now it has to repeat exactly the same autocompletes every time it opens, and has to do so even if the data that originally caused the auto complete changes. All this is nearly algrithmically I’m-Seville without changing the document into a history. And now CSV is useless for data transfer. It’s vastly more sane to change to the data the user meant to enter, show it to the user for confirmation, and save that. That the 99.99% use case bites the remaining 1 in 10,000 is a perfectly reasonable trade off, done throughout society in uncounted ways.

FabHK 6y ago

Excel does that, largely: cells have a datatype, a value, and a format (among other properties). Changing the format leaves the value unchanged. However, when you input something into a cell, Excel has to parse it and decide what value and datatype to assign to it. That is just inevitable, and the same everywhere: in Python, `x = 3` assigns an integer, `x = 3.` a floating point, and `x='3'` a string. Similarly hints (or explicit specifications of type) are possible in Excel. However, given that, what you typed originally is not recoverable anywhere (Python doesn't record whether you wrote `x=3.` or `x = 3.00`, why should it?). So, to the extent that it is reasonable, Excel does what you request, and to the extent it doesn't do it, it's not reasonable, I'd say: A cell need not maintain the original pre-parsing input.

ChrisLomont 6y ago

> The text you typed in (or loaded from a CSV file) should be preserved That’s even worse, since a user assumes the cell holds what it shows. Excel, for example, auto completes entries, which is extremely useful for data entry, and for accuracy. If it only held the few characters entered, now it has to repeat exactly the same autocompletes every time it opens, and has to do so even if the data that originally caused the auto complete changes. All this is nearly algrithmically I’m-Seville without changing the document into a history. And now CSV is useless for data transfer. It’s vastly more sane to change to the data the user meant to enter, show it to the user for confirmation, and save that. That the 99.99% use case bites the remaining 1 in 10,000 is a perfectly reasonable trade off, done throughout society in uncounted ways.