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I d like to know if there exists a spreadsheet application which uses an existing functional-programming language to define functions.

I ve already heard about Resolver One which uses python, but I m more interested in anything which uses a purely functional language like Haskell.

Thanks

Answer 1

Spreadsheets are quite a popular application among functional programmers. They have been a recurring theme in papers over the years. Some of the more memorable papers include

Spreadsheet Functional Programming by David Wakeling (2007).
Forms/3 by Margaret Burnett and many others (2001)
Implementing Function Spreadsheets by Peter Sestoft (2008)

You can also read about an effort to make Excel more functional.

For each of these papers I have either read the paper or heard a talk based on the papers. None of the papers is fabulous but all of them are good. I think the one with the most interesting ideas is by Sestoft—and his experimental results are pretty amazing.

Answer 2

If you count JavaScript as a functional programming language you can use Google Web Scripts for Google Spreadsheets :)

Answer 3

There s Scheme In A Grid (http://siag.nu/siag/), but it s looking kind of out of date.

There s also Haxcel (http://www.mrtc.mdh.se/projects/Haxcel/), which was a thesis project.

If you want to do functional programming in a spreadsheet the best practical choice is probably Resolver One, as you ve already noted. (I would say "functional programming" in this context means first-class functions that work with other spreadsheet functions and the sheet itself - i.e. you could write a function that returns a function, call it and have the result go in a cell for yet other cells to call, etc. I don t know if OpenOffice and Google Docs will do that.)

A colleague and I have been working on a little project to do this within Excel, using a syntax very close to Excel formulas. I described it briefly in a comment on Roy MacLeans s VBA Blog:

http://roymacleanvba.wordpress.com/2009/08/04/domain-specific-languages-%e2%80%93-part-2/#comment-130

It s changed some since I posted that, but if you want to call our very-minimal syntax a "language", it s certainly "pure". (And I m still planning to release it to the vast universe of FP-implemented-in-VBA enthusiasts, but stuff keeps coming up...)

Answer 4

There is herculus.io

But it seems down currently.

The guide describes a concept I find very interesting: https://app.herculus.io/doc/guides/app/

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