On Wed, Jan 6, 2010 at 11:55 PM, MSB <[email protected]> wrote: > > Yes, that would work for your requirement Filip but I can easilly imagine > another using say that the String value "$2,500" should be converted to a > number and a format should be generated and applied automatically to the > cell so that they did not lose the dollar sign and comma separator - and is > this really the function of a setCellYtpe() method? I think that we could > convincingly argue that if you try to convert a cell whose type is text or > string into a numeric cell (for example) then a warning should be issued > that information may be lost. In my opinion, it will not be possible to > catch and handle every little requirement, so the conversion of the value > should be performed and the user ought to be warned that changes may occur > to the appearence of the cell.
It probably wouldn't be that hard to loop over the data formats and see which ones fit and convert. A warning would indeed be nice or an extra parameter to the setCellType() method. E.g. setCellType(Cell.TYPE*, boolean convert) In either case, calls to setCellType() shouldn't fail. On a somewhat related topic: I'm really surprised that calls to .getStringCellValue() fail if the type of a cell is not string. It'd seem logical to me to return a string representation of the cell's value (or to have another method called .getCellDisplayValue() or something like that so a user has a single method they know they can always call to get the value of a cell without needing switch statements all over the code to handle variations). Cheers, - Filip --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
