It probably does... i've even written some before. Unfortunately, the
ones I've written were generally in C/C++/Perl. For what you're
specifically trying to do -- namely the substitutions so you only have
atomic values -- is fairly specialized, from what I'm used to. It's not
what I'd call difficult, merely an adaptation from basic parsers to
include substitution.

In other words, you're probably going to have to write your own code to
do it, but you can probably search for formula parsing to get
pseudocode if you need it.

Scott

wrote:
this is not a homework assignment, but instead the desire for a general
tool to convert excel logic into a form suitable for scripting, VB or
otherwise.

Assume "simple" functions only, like +, -, *, / .

Shouldn't this tool exist already?


Tim Williams wrote:
Is this a homework assignment?

You could try looking at each cells Precedents. Parsing out cell references manually might be a bit complex...

--
Tim Williams
Palo Alto, CA


wrote in message ps.com...
The task is, find a function to convert any formula in excel into an
"atomic formula". Formally defined below, but first, an example:

Cell A1 is "=A2"
Cell A2 is "=A3+A4"
Cell A3 is "5" (atomic)
Cell A4 is "=A5+A6"
Cell A5 is "=7" (atomic)
Cell A6 is "=8" (atomic)

Then the function, given A1's formula "=A2' as input, would return
"=A3+A5+A6" as the equivalent atomic formula.


Define an "atomic cell" to be any cell containing no references to
other cells. An "atomic formula" contains only references to atomic
cells, not any other type of references. Every non-circular formula
can be reduced to an atomic formula by continually replacing the cell
references which are non-atomic with a statement of the formula itself,
as in the example

Does such a method exist, either built-in to excel or does someone have
code?

thanks