https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=114430

orcmid <[email protected]> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
             Status|RESOLVED                    |REOPENED
                 CC|                            |[email protected]
         Resolution|WONTFIX                     |---
     Ever confirmed|0                           |1

--- Comment #6 from orcmid <[email protected]> ---
Technically, the proper response for calculation of 0^0 is NaN.  I suspect
there is a setting somewhere in the FPU to make it 1 though.  I remember
arguing with Don Knuth about this once (since he found 1 nicer for certain
things).  

I once published (in Dr. Dobbs) a Pascal implementation of x^n for integer n. 
I solved the problem for 0^0 by returning 0/0, which is expected to be
mathematically equivalent if neither is NaN.  If the floating point
implementation determined that to be NaN, good.  If it was set up to return
something else, I had managed to side-step imposing my own notion of the
correct answer.

This doesn't solve the problem for Calc of course.  OpenFormula specifies (in
6.4.6) that 0^0 is not permitted.  But it also says a^b is implemented by
POWER(a,b).  In 6.16.46 POWER(0,0) is implementation-defined but must be one of
0, 1, or an Error. 

The smart thing is to do whatever Excel does in this case.  I just got #NUM!
for =POWER(0,0) using Excel 2013 Preview.  The thing about #NUM! is that it
can't be overlooked, whereas a result of 0 or 1 can end up being used in
further calculations without awareness of what is happening.  Someone who
doesn't like #NUM! (or the Calc equivalent) can add logic to produce the result
they prefer instead if 0^0 is possible in their particular spreadsheet.

Since Pedro is going to look into this, I am changing the status of this issue
to REOPENED.

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