Calc: whats's the meaning of '{}'

[newbie-02]

hello out there,

who knows what’s the meaning / function of ‘{}’ in calc formulas?

i couldn’t immediately find what they meant,

(i’m not shure if it’s named ‘curly braces’ or ‘curly brackets’ correctly)

they seem responsible for a ‘not recalculation’ or ‘stuck in not recalculation’ in the third sample in

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=97897

(it’s used in E23:E57 on that sheet, and once one of theese cells calculates to that result on a change of F20, it’s not anymore taken into account on further changes, neither comes back to it’s old value on undo … funny …)

(change F20 to ‘2’ and back to ‘3’ or undo, results in E30:E33 are ‘lost’)

the function wizard calculates ‘better’ results in that sample, using ‘0’ instead of ‘{}’ makes the formula work better, thus i’m curious what ‘{}’ stands for. ‘NULL’? ‘0’ not to be displayed and no further touch? ‘out of the game’’?

tia

b.

[anon73440385]

Hello,

see about curly braces {} (in the context of the bug report mentioned in your question):

• LibreOffice Help - Inline Array Constant
• OASIS ODF Specification 5.13 Inline Arrays

Note: Curly braces also occur in the context of array functions.

[newbie-02]

sorry, still not oriented:

is it an ‘empty array’?

saying something like ‘no value for an undefined cell’?

only appearence of “{}”:

“Constraints: N != {}; Evaluators may evaluate expressions that do not meet this constraint.”

to understand that i’d have to dive deep into the context of that statement …

it’s just that special case “{}” - two curly brackets with ‘nothing inside’ what i’m curious about, {1;2;3} makes sense, {} not - not yet …

[anon73440385]

It is an empty inline array - don’t ask me why it is used in the formula (I can’t grasp the idea behind using “{}” instead of "" either)

“Constraints: N != {}; Evaluators may evaluate expressions that do not meet this constraint.”

If you refer to some statements, please cite the place where you find that. The statement is about the fact that the Standard defines empty inline arrays are not allowed (defined) by the standard (Constraint), but Evaluators (i.e. software product implementing the standard) are “allowed” by the standard to implement (and thus circumvent the constraint) their own solution for arrays not meeting the non-empty-requirement.

[newbie-02]

@opaque: thanks for clarifying and high respect for your fundamental knowledge …