On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 3:26 PM, Hagar Delest <hagar.del...@laposte.net> wrote: > Le 10/02/2013 21:16, Stuart a écrit : > >> Both of you have perfectly reasonable points. Why don't we simply make it >> configurable whether POWER returns one, zero, or some error? For reasons of >> backward compatibility we could return the value one as default, and if the >> user wants better MS Office compatibilty, he could change the configuration >> of POWER. > > > Hardly doable I guess. > Very few users may be aware of the trick behind the 0^0 problem. > The software has to give the most correct answer as possible. If the user > needs the result to be 1, then ISERROR may help. > > If we let the user decide how functions should behave it will be quickly a > real mess. And users will be lost too. They want something that works, not > something that ask them about their opinion about complex maths problems. >
This is NOT a complex math problem. It is trivial one, with three perfectly valid answers. Debating among them is merely a time-wasting form of bikeshedding. Everyone and his little sister has an opinion on 0^0. The real problem is this: once we have adopted a convention for this debatable expression, under what conditions do we change the convention and break comptibility? Any other formulation of the question is missing the essence of this decision. -Rob > Hagar
