From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Carsten Dominik <dominik@science.uva.nl>
Subject: Re: Spreadsheet question
Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2008 08:26:46 +0100
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To: Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org>
Cc: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org

Hi Tassilo,

I can see that this could be confusing, and maybe it should throw an  
error.

The use-ase fo this are running means as column formulas
that would be undefined for he first few rows in.  Consider
the following table:


| i | nn | mean of last 3 |
|---+----+----------------|
| 1 |  4 |           4.00 |
| 2 |  7 |           5.50 |
| 3 |  2 |           4.33 |
| 4 |  4 |           4.33 |
| 5 |  5 |           3.67 |
| 6 |  7 |           5.33 |
| 7 |  9 |           7.00 |
| 8 | 22 |          12.67 |
#+TBLFM: $3=vmean([@-2$-1..$-1]);%.2f

I am not sure how common this use is and who would
be hurt by turning this behavior into an error.

- Carsten

On Dec 4, 2008, at 11:49 AM, Tassilo Horn wrote:

> Carsten Dominik <dominik@science.uva.nl> writes:
>
> Hi Carsten,
>
>> @-1 references the row above the current.  If that is a hline, if
>> actually references the current line.
>
> Yes, I see that, but I wonder if that's actually the right thing to  
> do.
> IMO defaulting to some cell/row/column which is not referenced  
> correctly
> might obscure wrong formulas.
>
> For example, in my case the first calculation gave 2 which is correct
> and only the second recalculation shows me that the forumla is wrong.
> So I'd prefer an #ERROR if a reference doesn't exist.
>
> Bye,
> Tassilo