Patrick Burrows wrote: > I can't think of a logical reason why the guy who wrote the Format() > function would do this. In fact, I would think it would be best to > convert anything passed in, no matter what, into a string, do the > formatting (which is now easier cause it is a string) and then return > the result.
Not being a VB6 user, I have a hard time imagining this is a good thing. Could you not specify any type of formatting for the results? If what I handed to Format was converted to strings by the system before Format even got a look at it, that's potentially quite wasteful. Who's to say it was in the right format, and that all precision was maintained? I suppose in some lucky instances, the passed in string might be right, but in many others I could forsee having to turn that string back into a native type, so it could then be properly formatted. But perhaps this is my C++ bias. Our formatting possibilities were quite powerful. Your e-mail illustrates to me how badly VB programmers need to be yanked out of their type-less world for their own good. Brad -- Read my web log at http://www.quality.nu/dotnetguy/ You can read messages from the DOTNET archive, unsubscribe from DOTNET, or subscribe to other DevelopMentor lists at http://discuss.develop.com.
