BASE Function (Calligra Sheets)

• Introduced: First release not established; the name is present in Calligra 2.4.0 source.
• Supported in: Calligra Sheets 26.08.2, with no retirement established.
• Scope: Desktop Sheets with the Engineering function module. Examples use English semicolon-separated formulas.
• Checked: October 14, 2026. Formulas were executed through the official 25.04.2 engine library, with source and independent arithmetic checks. This is not GUI-cell or workbook-import evidence; 26.08.2 was source-checked, not executed.

BASE returns a text representation in a selected radix. The digit alphabet is 0–9 and A–Z. It is useful for display codes and comparing the same small integer in several number systems; it does not encode the characters of a decimal string separately. Function help.

=BASE(number[;base[;minLength]])

Only number is required in the registered implementation. Base defaults to 10; minLength defaults to 0. The help’s syntax calls the third argument “prec,” while its parameter description says MinLength. The evaluator uses it as minimum total output length, not a number of fractional digits. Supply an integer base from 2 through 36 and a nonnegative integer width deliberately. Brackets mark optional arguments and are not entered in a formula. Registration, implementation and versioned help.

These outputs were obtained through Calligra 25.04.2’s Formula parser and calculation library. The ordinary conversions also match independent positional arithmetic. Backticks preserve literal leading zeroes; they are not part of the entered result.

For inventory ID 13, enter 13 in A2, 2 in B2 and 8 in C2. =BASE(A2;B2;C2) produces the text 00001101. The arithmetic check is 13=8+4+1. Preserve the original numeric ID in a separate column so arithmetic is not later performed on a string whose radix may be misunderstood.

The recorded round trip =DECIMAL(BASE(255;16;4);16) returns numeric 255. Its inner text is 00FF, and 15×16+15=255. DECIMAL interprets that text using the stated base; converting back naturally discards the display padding.

Width is a minimum, not a truncation limit here. BASE(16;2;2) gives 10000 because five binary digits are needed. A fixed-width export should reject values that exceed its field capacity instead of removing significant digits.

BASE has permissive input conversion: the engine test with the text “abc” produced “0”. Do not use it as a validator for imported IDs. A negative width is changed to 2 by this wrapper, while a fractional input is truncated in the shared helper. The observed negative integer −1 becomes the text −1 in both tested bases, rather than a ten-digit complement. These behaviors differ from the stricter digit-only DEC2 functions.

The following engine results show the specific inputs tested. They do not establish every text-format, locale or import rule.

The shared text-conversion helper narrows the numeric input to a C++ int before formatting it. These small integer examples do not establish safe conversion of arbitrary large identifiers. Validate the intended value and field width before export; do not assume another spreadsheet’s numeric limits or signed convention.

The Engineering module and conversion helper are byte-identical in the inspected 25.04.2 and 26.08.2 source files. That supports the source comparison, but does not turn these engine tests into execution of a newer binary or confirmation of its UI/import behavior.