Cyclomatic Complexity

**Bob1980** · 10-11-2011, 04:44 PM

Yeah, that was one of the first things I did. Unfortunately, most of the hits refer to pages that provide the output of this analysis tool in excel; rather then analyzing excel by itself.

There is one posting that I found, but I am not sure if the VBA code measures the cyclomatic complexity of the VBA Script in an excel spreadsheet or the functions in the spreadsheet. Unfortunately for me, the industry I am in is not allowed to use VBA.

**6StringJazzer** · 10-11-2011, 08:27 PM

Just my $0.02 but cyclomatic complexity measures procedural code. Excel is a different beast and I don't know how you would even apply it. An Excel spreadsheet can have an arbitrary number of independent paths. Would you propose to measure each path and come up with a consolidated number of some kind?

Edit: What complexity would you assign to an Excel function? Do you count the number of range references, and then count as a step each time a range reference resolved to a cell with another formula? Just trying to figure out how you could possibly apply this to Excel. Another complication is that (modern) procedural code has a single entry point but an Excel spreadsheet does not have an entry point.

**snb** · 10-12-2011, 03:57 AM

I think the cylomatic complexity of your question is -0.
You are looking for a VB script (your first post) for an industry that uses MS office (your fist post) but doesn't allow VBA (your second post).

So why using computers and software in the first place ?

**Bob1980** · 10-12-2011, 09:20 AM

RE: 6StringJazzer

Thanks for your input. I am new to programming, and you raise a lot of good points. I'm really just looking for ways to analyze my spreadsheet, and also find techniques that will help me find the bugs.