[Octave-bug-tracker] [bug #47815] io package, OCT interface: xls2oct fails reading formula results

[Philip Nienhuis]

Update of bug #47815 (project octave):

                  Status:                    None => Need Info              
             Assigned to:                    None => philipnienhuis         
                 Release:                   4.0.1 => other                  
                 Summary: io package, OCT interface: xls2oct fails => io
package, OCT interface: xls2oct fails reading formula results

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Follow-up Comment #1:

I tend to close this bug report with "Invalid" or "Won't fix", but before that
you can enlighten me a bit.

How did you create the last version of test1.xlsx ? Did you add the formula
using the OCT interface?

Let me explain:

Exploring the spreadsheet file using LibreOffice I find that the offending
cell contains a formula merely referencing another cell. That other cell again
contains a (more complicated) formula.

That makes me wonder whether you entered the formula as a text string with the
OCT interface. 
The OCT interface does not contain a formula evaluator (nor a formula
validator), so if you use that to enter or change a formula, the (cached)
value in the XML cell will not be updated, and in case of new cell contents it
will not even initialized. 
FYI it is those cached formula result values that are read (unless you specify
to read the formulas themselves).

Sure enough, after I read & saved the file with LibreOffice, your script
worked fine and cell B232 correctly contained the value 234.

The only spreadsheet interfaces with formula validators and -evaluators are:
* UNO (invoking LibreOffice / OpenOffice.org behind the scenes)
* COM (invoking Excel behind the scenes)
* Apache POI (Java based). I'm unsure if this one really works well; it did to
some extent at the time I wrote io package's POI interface 7 years ago but for
various reasons I'd rather invoke LibreOffice for the job.


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