Natural Order Evaluation of Spreadsheet Cells
Instead of just tossing this bit of history in the trash I decided to scan and post it for posterity. In the mid-80s I worked for EMS/McGraw-Hill on a series of products for the Gregg division that were used to train students on how to use Lotus 1-2-3 and spreadsheets in general. We created a product called McGraw-Hill Integrated Software (MHIS) which included a spreadsheet module (written in C for MS-DOS). The memo I wrote explaining the implementation of natural order evaluation in a spreadsheet vs. column-order evaluation in a spreadsheet is below. It was fun to see that I was able to use my computer science education to bring a postorder traversal of a binary tree to the project!
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAwdUaz7pScKeuW7yakpbCo-zeG8mA8s0L0toa3Dweur-mkxmTYO9d6TLzSgzz5e5LODZvpt29xQUtwbB8Vhw6dwVjOTuMgD5F7Er9-rj7FNXzkmmpyeMHYsjcGmT9ocEzLCPM/s640/Natural+Order+Val+p1.png)
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSd7x_kOlaLBZfrfnNM1Dby6x1dYJ1VNQILI4lFSG-93OxLvUySErMTSN_r67DjWnV0FeFVskirP8VrB79VMhNenaI3b-DHwHE1ojYN5sizgvhcpQGKlgiZfXEII1Bn87Tpho9/s640/Natural+Order+Val+p2.png)
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgurPkxGMkoDDyE5EmxwiFLmsJPT7Bw6mmXpfTV5m4J8y-_OrZabtNwOCoJ3piGI-mnGTDuMqEO8rU78rRBD3dRBiGk58NS8MaBWcLa68q80iLNAIGxhcN1PrzNPnvooGxpbvT3/s400/Natural+Order+Val+p3.png)
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAwdUaz7pScKeuW7yakpbCo-zeG8mA8s0L0toa3Dweur-mkxmTYO9d6TLzSgzz5e5LODZvpt29xQUtwbB8Vhw6dwVjOTuMgD5F7Er9-rj7FNXzkmmpyeMHYsjcGmT9ocEzLCPM/s640/Natural+Order+Val+p1.png)
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSd7x_kOlaLBZfrfnNM1Dby6x1dYJ1VNQILI4lFSG-93OxLvUySErMTSN_r67DjWnV0FeFVskirP8VrB79VMhNenaI3b-DHwHE1ojYN5sizgvhcpQGKlgiZfXEII1Bn87Tpho9/s640/Natural+Order+Val+p2.png)
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgurPkxGMkoDDyE5EmxwiFLmsJPT7Bw6mmXpfTV5m4J8y-_OrZabtNwOCoJ3piGI-mnGTDuMqEO8rU78rRBD3dRBiGk58NS8MaBWcLa68q80iLNAIGxhcN1PrzNPnvooGxpbvT3/s400/Natural+Order+Val+p3.png)