This calculator showed the feasibility of numerical calculations expressed in an alternate markup. Its derived from an earlier awk script now in coffeescript. github 
Jackson Hole Expenses February, '81 Cal Diller ... 71.25 Cowboy Steak House 24 M/M 26 Mexican 60 Lift Tickets 13.50 Pizza ------- CAL Bill Pooley ... 48 * 3 Lift Tickets 14.04 Breakfast 368.16 Room 29.31 Drinks ------- BILL Ward Cunningham ... 14.73 Gas 14.2 13.86 17 14.5 13.76 ------- GAS Total Gas 15 Blue Lion 48 Lift 30.55 Anthonys 69.24 Alpenhof GAS Total Gas ------- WARD Total Shared Expenses ... CAL Cal Diller BILL Bill Pooley WARD Ward Cunningham ------- TOTAL / 3 ------- SHARE Individual Share Individual Balances ... BILL Bill's Expenses SHARE DB ------- SUM 3.86 Telephone, Cal 6.01 Telephone, Ward ------- DB Due Bill CAL Cal's Expenses SHARE DB ------- SUM 3.86 DB Telephone ------- DC Due Cal WARD Ward's Expenses SHARE DB ------- SUM 6.01 DB Telephone ------- DW Due Ward Doublechecking ... DB DC DW ------- ERROR Unaccounted Funds
I wrote this calculator when I volunteered to work out the expenses for our 1981 ski trip to Jackson Hole. I wasn't even sure how to approach the calculation so I just started writing facts into a file.
Pretty soon I realized that if I could just sum the groups and then bring those sums into other groups then I'd pretty much have it. I wrote a small AWK script to do just that and print a report. I finished the script and the report together. webpage .