# ExceLint: Automatically Finding Spreadsheet Formula Errors

## TL;DR

ExceLint is a static analysis tool that efficiently detects spreadsheet formula errors by leveraging the rectangular structure of spreadsheets and an information-theoretic approach, improving accuracy and speed over previous methods.

## Contribution

The paper introduces ExceLint, a novel static analysis method that automatically finds spreadsheet formula errors using the rectangular layout and information theory, outperforming existing techniques.

## Key findings

- ExceLint detects errors in spreadsheets within 5 seconds on average.
- It significantly outperforms previous analysis methods.
- The approach is effective across diverse spreadsheet datasets.

## Abstract

Spreadsheets are one of the most widely used programming environments, and are widely deployed in domains like finance where errors can have catastrophic consequences. We present a static analysis specifically designed to find spreadsheet formula errors. Our analysis directly leverages the rectangular character of spreadsheets. It uses an information-theoretic approach to identify formulas that are especially surprising disruptions to nearby rectangular regions. We present ExceLint, an implementation of our static analysis for Microsoft Excel. We demonstrate that ExceLint is fast and effective: across a corpus of 70 spreadsheets, ExceLint takes a median of 5 seconds per spreadsheet, and it significantly outperforms the state of the art analysis.