Checking for invalid chars in define_name() seems to be wrong

[martinfranz]

Hi,
the code checks for invalid chars like this (version 0.73 in function define_name):

# Warn if the sheet name contains invalid chars as defined by Excel help.
if ( $name !~ m/^[a-zA-Z_\\][a-zA-Z_.]+/ ) {
    carp "Invalid characters in name '$name' used in defined_name()\n";
    return -1;
}

Excel allows for numbers in the name starting with the second character, so 0-9 should be added to the pattern match.
The check should go until the end of the name, so a $ should be added at the end.
In my opinion the line with the "if" should therefor look like:

if ( $name !~ m/^[a-zA-Z_\][a-zA-Z_0-9.]+$/ ) {

Best regards, Martin
P.S: thanks for that awesome module John!

[jmcnamara]

Very true, the current rule in Excel::Writer::XLSX is too restrictive. It should probably allow Unicode characters as well.

I'll fix it for the next release.

Thanks,

John

[jmcnamara]

Hi Martin,

I've pushed a fix for this to the master branch. If you get a chance you can try it out.

In the end I settled for the following to allow for Unicode matching:

    # Warn if the name contains invalid chars as defined by Excel help.
    if ( $name !~ m/^[\w\\][\w.]*$/ || $name =~ m/^\d/ ) {
        carp "Invalid characters in name '$name' used in defined_name()\n";
        return -1;
    }

I also added some additional checks and a test case for valid/invalid defined names.

If you see any cases that I've missed let me know.

John

[martinfranz]

Hi John,

I tried your fix with my code and it worked fine.

Thanks for this extremely fast fix!

[jmcnamara]

Hi Martin,

Thanks for the feedback. Fixed in version 0.74 which is on its way to CPAN.

Thanks,

John