[libreoffice-users] Awkward behaviour of LO Calc

Hello to all,

I have found a fancy behavior of Calc but I cannot decide whether it is
a bug or a "feature". Hence I was looking for your advice before posting
a bug report (if required).

  1. Open LO Calc
  2. In A1 enter formula "=1-2^2" and press enter key
     The result shown is -3 which is ok since
     1-2² = 1-(2²) = 1-4 = -3
  3. In A2 enter formula "=-2^2" and press enter key
     I would expect this to be treated as -2² = -(2²) = -4
     But Calc considers it as (-2)² = +4
     Quite obviously, a work around is to define the formula as
     "=-(2^2)" which indeed returns -4

I've checked the wiki page dedicated to operators [1] but it does not
give much information on operator precedence.

From my standpoint, both examples show an inconsistent behavior of Calc.
For me, either we should have both 1-2^2 = 1+4 = 5 and -2^2 = +4
Or we should have both 1-2^2 = 1-4 = -3 and -2^2 = -4

However, perhaps some of you have a different view point on the matter ?
In other words, is that a bug or is it perfectly normal ?

Of course changing such behavior will cause a hell lot of trouble in
existing documents… but perhaps the operator precedence should be
explicitly specified on the wiki ?

Tested both on LO 5.1.0.3 and on LO 4.2.8.2 (build ID 420m0(Build:2)).

Cheers,

Gaël Lorieul


[1] https://help.libreoffice.org/Calc/Operators_in_Calc



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