Re: [office-formula] 6.3.7 Infix Operator "<>"

[Andreas J Guelzow <aguelzow@math.concordia.ab.ca>]

On Tue, 2009-01-13 at 14:33 -0500, Patrick Durusau wrote:
> Andreas J Guelzow wrote:
> > On Tue, 2009-01-13 at 14:04 -0500, Patrick Durusau wrote:
> > <snip>
> >   
> >> That would require saying that violation of value types for input or 
> >> output of any function results in an error.
> >>
> >> Is that a desirable result?
> >>     
> >
> > This is surely _not_ a desirable result (if we want to continue
> > traditional behaviour) unless we change most function definitions:
> > frequently when I argument is supposed to be an Integer but an
> > non-Integer number is given, implementations perform a conversion
> > (frequently a truncation, sometimes a rounding). We surely do not want
> > to force an error unless we change all definitions to accept arbitrary
> > numbers and specify the conversion to be used. Of course in the spirit
> > of interoperability we really should do the latter.
> >
> >   
> OK, but 6.2 Implicit Conversion Operators seems to say that if an 
> incorrect value type is given to a function, then automatically 
> conversions are performed, but if one fails, then an error is produced, 
> which should make the function return an error.

Many of these automatic conversions are "implementation defined". It is
not clear to me whether this also means that some implementations may
raise errors when others don't.

> 
> That is I think conversions are already specified, at least as I am 
> reading the text.
> 
> Is that not your understanding?

if you consider "implementation defined" to be a specification...

Andreas

> 
> It says in part: "...If the passed-in type does not match the expected 
> type, an attempt is made to automatically convert the value to the 
> expected type."
> 
> So, in part I think the text is saying what I am saying, that it 
> requires automatic conversion and then tosses an error if that fails. Or 
> at least so it seems to say to me.
> 
> Remember this is only my second read of the entire draft so there is 
> interplay that I am no doubt missing.
> 
> Hope you are having a great day!
> 
> Patrick
> 
-- 
Andreas J. Guelzow
Concordia University College of Alberta