Hello everyone,
Eike Rathke wrote:
Clear that an operator treats text numbers different than a function.
Actually that's not a difference between operators and functions, but
a difference between operators or functions expecting a scalar value as
argument, such as the result of a single cell reference, and a cell or
range reference that results in a number sequence. To illustrate Excel
behavior:
A1: '-3
A2: 4
=ABS(A1) => 3
=SUM(A1:A2) => 4
=SUM(A1,A2) => 4
=A1+A2 => 1
Eike
And this is what I hate in Excel. The 2 sensible options are:
- raise an error
BUT then implement a mechanism to detect these string-cells and
easily convert them to numbers
- 2nd option: less adequate, but sometimes needed:
interpret everything as number, in every function
The bigger problem is however different:
*Why* do people write numbers as strings?
This question is relatively easy to answer. By a large margin, strings
get used because the spreadsheet reformats their input in a way they do
NOT want it. Auto-detection algorithms (especially for date) play here a
role, but also sometimes a trivial formatting may trigger the user to
use a string instead of a number. Fixing these issues would largely
prevent the use of strings as numbers (of course not in the competitor's
applications, so one should still support the 2nd option and the first
one). Also, the first option is only feasible IF this bigger problem is
fixed, because otherwise the user can't fix his number problem.
Sincerely,
Leonard
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