Functional Spreadsheets

Supervisor: David Watt

Abstract

A modern spreadsheet system such as Excel is a powerful tool than can be used to support a huge variety of administrative tasks. Its power derives from an extensive function library, which includes many functions that operate over ranges of cells. However, the formula notation used in a typical spreadsheet system is clumsy and inextensible. For example, the user cannot define new functions, and the "database" functions rely on "criteria" stored as text in the spreadsheet itself. It is very likely that spreadsheet systems could be even more powerful, and easier to use, if they borrowed simple concepts from programming languages. For instance:

• Types The content of a single cell could be seen as being of type Number or String. A "range" of cells could be seen as a 1- or 2-dimensional array. However, there is nothing to stop a user from casually changing the content of a cell from a number to a string, perhaps invalidating a formula in some faraway cell. And there is nothing to stop a user from referring to a range of cells that contains a mixture of data types.

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Resources

Software: Java, Ada, or other programming language with a GUI library.