I've noticed if my equations get to long they're no longer displayed. It seems to be related to the number of operations and/or total number of characters. Is there a way to increase this value?

Taking the following equations and entering them into excel then selecting show equation button gives the following results.

(128 Characters)
=1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+111
Gives properly formatted equation


(129 Characters)
=1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1111
Gives a text string of the equation


(130 Characters)
=1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+11111
Gives no display but xlc equation is still present


First make three copies of the equation 128 characters long and then show click show equation for each copy, now select the second equation add a 1 to the end then while the cell with the XCL equation is highlighted click show equation. You should get the equation properly formatted with a 1111 at the end if you do this one more time so that you get the equation with 130 characters you should get the following warning #Equation string is greater than 255 characters# even though there are only 130 characters total (I assume that the warning is related to the output being larger than 255 characters.)

This seems inconsistent, and I have some extremely long equations to enter and display (the longer the equation the more necessary it is to display it)

Hi Bridger Jeff and thanks for all your comments they are very pertinent and useful to me. There is a 255 characters string limits in XLC, this is the same as Excel's equation limit however there could well be some inconsistencies because XLC does a lot of string manipulating. In your example XLC will insert spaces between operators because this makes equations easier to read but it increases the length of the equation string. It is not an issue I have given much thought to because I have never hit a string limits problem so far. I think XLC's current limit is set above reasonable expectations of what a user might hope to get out of an equation and I can see you are pushing the program to its limits with your test equations. I will give this issue some consideration when I next get to dive into the XLC code - but at the moment I am more preoccupied with packing up for my summer holiday in Tuscany
Thanks again Jeff