Re: Table column formula with remote reference

[Wu Ming]

> On 13 Mar 2024, at 20:16, Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@posteo.net> wrote:
> 
> Wu Ming <wu.ming2@icloud.com> writes:
> 
>> My fault. Missed the line "One of the very first actions during evaluation 
>> of Calc formulas and Lisp formulas is to substitute ‘@#’ and ‘$#’ in the 
>> formula with the row or column number of the field where the current result 
>> will go to.“  So '@@#' becomes '@<current row>'. 
>> 
>> Overlooked it also because I did read the other line "‘@0’ and ‘$0’ refer to 
>> the current row and column, respectively, i.e., to the row/column for the 
>> field being computed.” and did try '@0$1'. Why is this different from the 
>> above?
> 
> See "Remote references" subsection. It explains that in
> remote(NAME,REF), REF is inside the remote table. Relative and current
> column/row is ambiguous there.
> 
> In contrast, @# and $# are special - they are replaced before
> remote(...) is processed.
> 
> I agree that the manual is somewhat confusing. Possibly, we may even
> change `org-table-get-remote-range' to use relative references according
> to the original table. Improvements welcome!
> 

I have some trouble at understanding your answer. Do you mean @# refers a row 
on the table where the formula belongs and @0 refers a row on the remote table? 
Was tempted to describe the former as “current” but remote table is also 
current when accessed. A better noun may be needed.


Unrelated, but appeared on the same trial, noticed a cell was mis-calculated. 
Could not pin-point the reason before error disappeared after running a side 
formula performing the same operation. Formula was simply copying column values 
from a remote table. Remote table values were never changed. Recalculate all 
and C-c C-c were performed multiple times before the curious fix.

This made me worry about reliability of simple biz calculations I am trying on 
Org spreadsheet for the first time. Please advise.


Finally I moved columns but now column numbers in formulas don’t relate to 
column order on display. How to understand which column formula affect which 
column?


Sorry to coalesce multiple questions in to one. They just came to me while 
typing.