"Antonio Vernucci" wrote in message
...
Do you realise that the '-' in both expressions are quite different in
meaning, one is a unary negation operator, the other is the binary
subract operator.

I realise, but Microsoft apparently does not:

- for Excel: (-2^2 + 8) = 12
- for Visual Basic: (-2^2 + 8) = 4

They look pretty much the same
Not to a programmer!

I would expect that some programmers may get confused, due to the
inconsistency of software products of the same company.

Tony I0JX

REAL programmers know the difference and add extra parenthesis just to be
sure the processor does what we want. for instance, i would NEVER use a
unary negate without adding parenthesis to be sure it was applied properly.
In most cases i would write that equation like: ((-1*A1)^2)+8, or even more
obvious in excel: power(-1*a1,2)+8