Case-sensitivity with string equalities

[alexgann]

In Excel "Cool" = "COOL"
In PHPExcel "Cool" <> "COOL"

As such, customer had formula in workbook: =IF(A2="NONE",True,False)
In Excel, when A2 = "None" the formula returns True
In PHPExcel the calculated value for the formula cell returns False

I did a cursory scan to try and find the culprit lines in the codebase but the Calculation engine is pretty dense so I figured I'd just toss this one over the wall. Maybe it is this way on purpose due to behavior of other spreadsheet apps - maybe it needs to be a condition just for COMPATIBILITY_EXCEL?

Easy enough to work around (made the customer match case in the workbook values), but I would think a guiding goal for PHPExcel would be to have consistency with Excel results.

Thanks!

[PowerKiKi]

I confirm the issue still exists and can be summed up like so:

Formula	Excel 2010	PHPExcel
="a" = "a"	TRUE	TRUE
="a" = "A"	TRUE	FALSE
="A" = "A"	TRUE	TRUE
="A" = "a"	TRUE	FALSE

Interestingly LibreOffice 4.0 seems to implement both modes. When creating a new document, it will be case sensitive (default behavior), but if you save it as .xlsx and re-open it, it will switch to case insensitive (Excel compatible behavior). The documentation does not mention anything though: https://help.libreoffice.org/Calc/Operators_in_Calc

My opinion is PHPExcel is not called PHPLibreOffice for a reason, and as much as it pains me to say it, I would implement Excel behavior as closely as possible.

I will have a look at PHPExcel source code and see if I can submit a PR...

[PowerKiKi]

I should add that Google Drive spreadsheets, behave the same way as Excel. One more argument in favor of Excel behavior for what it is worth...

[PowerKiKi]

I updated my original Pull Request, and it now properly support compatibility mode setting to use case sensitive for OpenOffice and case insensitive for everything else.

On a side note, I noticed PHPExcel unit tests would need a lot of love to fix them all. If I ever happen to do some of that work, on which branch should it be ? develop or develop_2.0.0 ?

[MarkBaker]

The unit tests certainly need a lot of love and attention, and have been largely neglected for a long time, and I'm ore than happy to see some new work in that area. The develop_2.0.0 branch is dead for the moment; I've refactored a lot of the code to use a an object factory, and moved some of the core components to a repository common for all PHPOffice applications; and am rewriting the calculation engine significantly, and those changes won't merge cleanly with any existing branch. So any additions should be against the develop branch.

[PowerKiKi]

Thank you for the clarification. I was indeed wondering how you planned to
merge those very heavy changes.