Re: dates in a spreadsheet

[Bernt Hansen <bernt@norang.ca>]

Josh Mattoon <joshmattoon@gmail.com> writes:

> Hey Nick, the first one came through just fine. This is pretty cool but still not quite what I'm looking for.  It totally helped me get what I wanted though!  I wanted to have a separate row for each day
> so I could fill in activities.  Modifying your example I get: 
>
> | date             | place   | activity                  | notes            |
> |------------------+---------+---------------------------+------------------|
> | <2010-03-19 Fri> |         |                           | dummy            |
> | <2010-03-20 Sat> |         |                           |                  |
> | <2010-03-21 Sun> | moon    | collect rocks             |                  |
> | <2010-03-22 Mon> | jupiter | thrash around the red dot |                  |
> | <2010-03-23 Tue> | mars    | see the little green men  |                  |
> | <2010-03-24 Wed> | earth   |                           | home, sweet home |
> #+TBLFM: @2$1 = <03-19-2010>::$1 = @-1$1 + 1
>
> Exactly what I wanted!  I can insert days, move them around, and just hit C-u C-c C-c to have it update.  I'd like to understand how it works though, if you don't mind.  What does the ::$1 synax mean?  And
> how did it know that we were dealing with a date?

As I understand it

This is a formula line with 2 formulas in it.  The formulas are
separated by the ::

@2$1 = <03-19-2010> sets the cell at row 2, column 1 to Mar 19, 2010

Then the next formula just calculates all of the values for column 1
leaving the static entry previously defined alone.

$1 = @-1$1 + 1   column 1 entries are the previous row for column 1 plus 1

so it just adds 1 to the initial value of the date for each following
row in your table.

HTH,
Bernt