GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 323787
funb.xls: BIN2*() functions not Excel compatible
Last modified: 2005-12-12 20:27:20 UTC
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~njl98r/excel/funb.xls The BIN2DEC, BIN2HEX, BIN2OCT pseudo-binary conversion functions have several common incompatibilities with Excel, found with the test workbook: 1. For very large input values such as 1E+10 Excel gives #NUM! while Gnumeric seems to ignore the "top" bits. Excel's behaviour definitely seems preferable here. 2. For negative or impossible values of 'places' Excel gives #NUM! while Gnumeric seemingly just ignores 'places'. Once again Excel's behaviour seems preferable. 3. For non-numeric values of 'number', such as strings, or the boolean FALSE, Excel gives #VALUE! while Gnumeric gives #NUM!. Excel's help is clear about this, and there seems no particular reason to keep Gnumeric's current behaviour.
Partially fixed in cvs.
Re 3: Excel _does_ allow strings, but only strings that are composed entirely of digits. No spaces, no signs, no dates-as-strings, no decimal point, no nothing. And BIN2DEC("") is 0.
Fixed in cvs head. Those functions are *u*g*l*y!