Implementing a functional spreadsheet in Clean

Abstract

It has been claimed that recent developments in the research on the efficiency of code generation and on graphical input/output interfacing have made it possible to use a functional language to write efficient programs that can compete with industrial applications written in a traditional imperative language. As one of the early steps in verifying this claim, this paper describes a first attempt to implement a spreadsheet in a lazy, purely functional language. An interesting aspect of the design is that the language with which the user specifies the relations between the cells of the spreadsheet is itself a lazy, purely functional and higher order language as well, and not some special dedicated spreadsheet language. Another interesting aspect of the design is that the spreadsheet incorporates symbolic reduction and normalisation of symbolic expressions (including equations). This introduces the possibility of asking the system to prove equality of symbolic cell expressions: a property which can greatly enhance the reliability of a particular user-defined spreadsheet. The resulting application is by no means a fully mature product. It is not intended as a competitor to commercially available spreadsheets. However, with its higher order lazy functional language and its symbolic capabilities it may serve as an interesting candidate to fill the gap between calculators with purely functional expressions and full-featured spreadsheets with dedicated non-functional spreadsheet languages. This paper describes the global design and important implementation issues in the development of the application. The experience gained and lessons learnt during this project are discussed. Performance and use of the resulting application are compared with related work. © 1995, Cambridge University Press. All rights reserved.