17-0029 -- response -- SML: Quoting of Worksheet Names Containing Periods

[Rex Jaeschke]

From: Alfred Hellstern <Alfred.Hellstern at microsoft.com> 
Sent: Monday, October 15, 2018 7:05 PM
To: Rex Jaeschke <rex at RexJaeschke.com>
Subject: 17-0029 -- response -- SML: Quoting of Worksheet Names Containing
Periods

 

17-0029 - the response here is:

2018-10-15 MS Experts via Alfred:

 

Implementor note referenced in our previous response is also present in the
standard in section 18.17.2.3.  So the location issue Charlie mentioned
should already be addressed.  The regex Charlie has is mostly incomplete
around its specification of operators, which he only covers a handful of.
Given that the rest of the formula syntax is EBNF specified we would
recommend maintaining consistency on that point.  Given that our proposal
here is to amend this section of the EBNF as indicated below.  In addition
there are some special cases that xl requires quoting.  Sheets named "R",
"C", "TRUE", or "FALSE" (case-insensitive) require quoting.

 

sheet-name=

sheet-name-characters ;

sheet-name-character=

character - (operator | apostrophe | "[" | "]" | "\" | "?" | ";" | "{" | "}"
| "(" | ")" ) ;

(* any character except operator or ', [, ], \, ? or , ;, {, }, (, or ) *)

sheet-name-characters=

sheet-name-character, {sheet-name-character} ;

sheet-name-character-start, {sheet-name-character};

sheet-name-character-start=

      sheet-name-character - ("." | [0-9]) ;

      (* any sheet-name-character except . or digits *)

 

Since Charlie confirmed the most recent versions of Excel no longer
reproduce the issue with quotes on a sheet name with '.' in the middle or
the chart error I think we can close that out as a technical defect in the
product which has been fixed with no need to update standards or
implementor's notes around it.

 

No objections to Charlie's recommendations around updating narrative prose
to indicate quoting can be used more broadly than strictly necessary.

 



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