Size of Excel 2007 worksheet - why 2^14 columns?

V

Val

Just curious - does anyone know why the number of columns is 16,384 (2^14)?
That's such an odd number. With the number of rows being 2^20, the combined
addressing for row/column is held in 34 bits.

Just seems a bit odd.
 
E

Emprovision

An excerpt from a walkthrough for the video game Golden Sun 2 might help (of
all the places). It (by Iron Knuckle) speaks of the maximum health of an
antagonist you must batlle:

Dullhan's HP in Monster Battle & Hard Mode
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is widely known that Dullahan has 16000 HP in combat during regular
gameplay. Many people also know that Hard Mode features enemies that have
150% of normal HP and 125% ATK and DEF. So naturally one would think that
Dullahan has 24000 HP, but this is not true!

The game cannot give creature more HP than 16383, for the following
reason. HP is stored in two bytes each containing 8 bits (oddly the first
bit isn't used at all, which means 15 bits only), but the value is signed
hence the first bit determines plus or minus. So we have fourteen bits 2^14
- 1 = 16383, which is the maximal value for enemy HP!

Lucky you, or else it would have been 24000! This saves you 7617 HP, but
then again you still have to worry about his increased attack and defense
power. On the other hand Summons grow stronger as the maximum HP gets
larger so it might actually become even easier to beat big D. BTW: the same
thing applies to Valukar, his HP would exceed this value as well but is
bounded too in Hard Mode.
 
V

Val

Well, that's interesting, but I don't see the relevance to Excel.


An excerpt from a walkthrough for the video game Golden Sun 2 might help (of
all the places). It (by Iron Knuckle) speaks of the maximum health of an
antagonist you must batlle:

Dullhan's HP in Monster Battle & Hard Mode
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is widely known that Dullahan has 16000 HP in combat during regular
gameplay. Many people also know that Hard Mode features enemies that have
150% of normal HP and 125% ATK and DEF. So naturally one would think that
Dullahan has 24000 HP, but this is not true!

The game cannot give creature more HP than 16383, for the following
reason. HP is stored in two bytes each containing 8 bits (oddly the first
bit isn't used at all, which means 15 bits only), but the value is signed
hence the first bit determines plus or minus. So we have fourteen bits 2^14
- 1 = 16383, which is the maximal value for enemy HP!

Lucky you, or else it would have been 24000! This saves you 7617 HP, but
then again you still have to worry about his increased attack and defense
power. On the other hand Summons grow stronger as the maximum HP gets
larger so it might actually become even easier to beat big D. BTW: the same
thing applies to Valukar, his HP would exceed this value as well but is
bounded too in Hard Mode.
 
H

Harlan Grove

Val said:
Just curious - does anyone know why the number of columns is 16,384 (2^14)?
That's such an odd number.  With the number of rows being 2^20, the combined
addressing for row/column is held in 34 bits.
Click to expand...

Just because.

It was going to be a power of 2. It had been 2^8 (256). To represent
the grid size (number of cells) in a signed long, if there were 2^20
rows, there would have needed to be no more than 2^10 (1024) columns.
I suppose MSFT thought 1024 columns just wasn't enough - given the 3-
letter column labeling scheme (column AAA immediately to the right of
column ZZ), the 1024th column is AMJ, and I suppose they would have
been embarrassed by only using A as the 1st of 3 letters in 3-letter
columns.
 
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