Re: Formulas in CSV files

[Jody Goldberg <jody gnome org>]

On Thu, Oct 23, 2003 at 05:34:57PM +0100, Spencer Collyer wrote:
> In an old version of Gnumeric (can't remember exactly which one, it was
> the one that came with Mandrake 8.0, and was a 0.*.* one) I could import a
> CSV file like the following:
>
> ---8<------Start File------8<---
> 1,"=date(2001,12,15)","=time(14,15,0)"
> 2,"=date(2001,12,15)","=time(14,45,0)"
> ---8<-------End File-------8<---
>
> and it would correctly interpret the formulas embedded in the file, and
> give me the actual formulas.

That was a bug.

> Now, however, with Gnumeric 1.0.12 under SuSE Pro 8.2, when I import such
> a file, it reads the formulas as strings. If I delete the "'" marker at
> the start of them then the formula works correctly, but obviously this is
> sub-optimal, and, for big files, a real non-starter.

We could probably add a new format type 'Expression' that would
attempt to parse the string as an expression if possible.  File an
enhancement request and we'll consider it for 1.3.x.