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Cursed Excel: "1/2"+1=45660

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Re: Cursed Excel: "1/2"+1=45660

#101

Post by prettymuchnoone »

mrgoldenbrown wrote: post #49
deepsun wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The others may have their own preferences to edit documents. It's like you edited one code file in a project, and you want everyone to switch to night IDE theme when they open that particular file.

More like I wrote some python code, and want to ensure the IDE doesn't change spaces to tabs. Night theme vs day theme is orthogonal to the code. Date parsing in Excel is not.

hm i mean, python doesn't really care about indentation kind, as long as it's consistent...

maybe writing a Makefile (which afaik really REALLY wants tabs), and want to ensure someone's IDE doesn't change it to spaces.

Re: Cursed Excel: "1/2"+1=45660

#102

Post by TheRealPomax »

Why would you type text if you need math to happen? Who cares if "1/2 + 1" are getting parsed wrong when you're typing them as text: you use Excel, so you know that math starts with "=". These are "user refused to even learn the basics" examples, not "cursed". The only cursing is anyone who's ever used spreadsheet software going "yes, that's how that works, why are you pretending that your own mistakes are the software's fault?"

Ooohhhhh it's an ad disguised as an article to bait people who don't use spreadsheet software into using their, "more intelligent" spreadsheet software. Okay.

Re: Cursed Excel: "1/2"+1=45660

#103

Post by hnlmorg »

fragmede wrote: post #94
hnlmorg wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“1/2” is a string. So “1/2”+1 is either an error because of datetype mismatch (which is terrible UX for a spreadsheet or going to mean one of the following to scenarios: Date plus a day “1/2” concatenates with “1” The latter is wrong, the former, while unexpected, does kind of make the most sense here.

Haven't seen "1/21" as an answer yet

An answer where? Not sure I follow

Re: Cursed Excel: "1/2"+1=45660

#105

Post by lloeki »

azalemeth wrote: post #57
lloeki wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> aslong as we dont base our endianess on how french pronounce or read If you're annoyed by French numbers (which come from Gauls counting in 20s) try numbers in Danish.

I am trying to learn Danish. I cannot agree with this enough. Consider "halvtreds," the Danish word for 50. A reasonable person might expect it to mean "half-three" based on pattern recognition and the fact that tre is three. But no! It's actually a compressed version of "halvtredsindstyve," meaning "half-third-times-twenty" or (2.5 × 20). This continues with "tres" (60), "halvfjerds" (70), and "firs" (80)—all using…

> "halvtredsindstyve," meaning "half-third-times-twenty" or (2.5 × 20).

And you even took a shortcut there, AIUI it's "three-minus-a-half" (and that many "twenty", vigesimal as you said) for the "2.5", kinda like roman numeral `IX` is nine ("ten minus one" because the `I` is before the `X`) so it's really an oddball mix of multiple ways to count.

(Source: my wife had a go with learning Danish as well, and we spent a little time going down that rabbit hole. I didn't even try, I'm sticking to easy things like Japanese)

Re: Cursed Excel: "1/2"+1=45660

#108

Post by dreghgh »

criddell wrote: post #36
nabilhat wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is supported in Excel. Select options > Data > Automatic Data Conversions > untick the boxes.

It's not working for me. I have those all unticked but if I create a new file and go to cell A1 and type 1/2, it puts 2-Jan in the cell rather than the text I want. If I then put 60/100 in cell A2, it doesn't do any conversion. Then put the formula "=Search("/", A1)" in cell B1 and copy that to cell B2, B1 evaluates to #VALUE! and B2 evaluates to 3.

If you want the text "1/2" you should type '1/2

If you want the value one-half you should type =1/2

Not sure why this is controversial, Excel obviously has a syntax that's not focused on reproducing literal text.

Re: Cursed Excel: "1/2"+1=45660

#109

Post by dreghgh »

recursive wrote: post #97
ziddoap wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But excel just incorrectly determines what you meant How would you, if you were programming excel, determine whether the 5-digit number entered with a leading 0 is meant to be a zip code or not?

I would not make any default determination until and unless there was a proactive user action. If there is any value that doesn't round trip through string serialization, don't allow it to be coerced without the user deciding to allow it, explicitly.

You know that many users of Excel enter numbers into the cells and then do arithmetic calculations with them right?

Re: Cursed Excel: "1/2"+1=45660

#110

Post by rickdeckard »

erk__ wrote: post #96
rickdeckard wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it provides any comfort, Excel in turn is unable to properly open/save a CSV with the separator being a comma (!) unless the regional settings of Windows are not defining it as such. On german systems it's for example a semicolon, so a CSV is basically a "semicolon separated value" file, and there is no working solution around that...

How do you make a comma seperated CSV with numbers with commas in them?

A comma separated CSV with decimal numbers uses a dot as a decimal point (US regional setting)

A German CSV uses a semicolon as a separator and a comma as a decimal point (German regional setting)

To create a US-style CSV on a German PC (with expectation to create a common CSV format) you need to change the regional setting of Windows before opening Excel...

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