I'm making it work, and using "L" rather than "S" turns out to be better, as in this revision of my example above:
$9 = '(if (eq "$2" "") "" (* @2$8 $1));L But when I want different actions when there is an explicit number (including 0) vs. a blank cell, and if my action is at all complex, I end up with one monster like this: $3 = '(if (eq "$2" "") "" (if (< $2 @2$8) 0 (calcFunc-max 0 (calcFunc-ilog (/ $2 @2$8) 2))));L and it just seems that "there oughta be a way" to do this with calc and outside of elisp. I've tried all sorts of calc things without success to date. (This gets even worse when you work with ranges and need to do operations on the cells in those ranges.) I guess the upside is that with elisp you can eventually do almost anything that comes to mind, if you have enough patience.