How to communicate unit error messages in spreadsheets

Abraham, Robin; Erwig, Martin

doi:10.1145/1082983.1083243

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…Consider, for example, the following spreadsheet. 3), (B1, True), (A2, not (0,-1)), (B2, not (0,-1))} Although the formulas in A2 and B2 are cp-similar, the cells (A2, not (0,-1)) and (B2, not (0,-1)) are not type equivalent because:…”

Section: Typing Of Spreadsheetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The type of these spreadsheets can be described more concisely by condensing areas of repeating types into a constant-size type information. This approach is similar to representing the type of the list [2,3,1,7,4] by a type [Int] instead of Int Int Int Int Int.…”

Section: Typing Of Templatesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The system then proceeds to compress the rows in the resulting spreadsheet, carrying out the following overlays one after another: (3,4), (3,4), and again (3,4), which means the system first overlays row 4 on row 3. In the resulting spreadsheet, the system once again overlays the new row 4 on row 3.…”

Section: G ← {{3 5}}mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We have implemented these ideas together with algorithms for automatic header inference (the process of identifying relationships between cells and labels) in a system called UCheck [1]. The rationale for the unit approach is to be able to communicate errors to end users in a form that they understand, that is, in terms of units/labels that they themselves are using in their spreadsheets and not in terms of abstract type system jargon [3].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Type inference for spreadsheets

Abraham

Erwig

2006

Proceedings of the 8th ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Principles and Practice of Declarative Programming

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Spreadsheets are the most popular programming systems in use today. Since spreadsheets are visual, first-order functional languages, research into the foundations of spreadsheets is therefore a highly relevant topic for the principles and, in particular, the practice, of declarative programming.Since the error rate in spreadsheets is very high and since those errors have significant impact, methods and tools that can help detect and remove errors from spreadsheets are very much needed. Type systems have traditionally played a strong role in detecting errors in programming languages, and it is therefore reasonable to ask whether type systems could not be helpful in improving the current situation of spreadsheet programming.In this paper we introduce a type system and a type inference algorithm for spreadsheets and demonstrate how this algorithm and the underlying typing concept can identify programming errors in spreadsheets. In addition, we also demonstrate how the type inference algorithm can be employed to infer models, or specifications, for spreadsheets, which can be used to prevent future errors in spreadsheets.

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Section: Typing Of Spreadsheetsmentioning

confidence: 99%