Re: [office-formula] A-functions

[Eike Rathke <erack@sun.com>]

Hi Tomas,

On Thu, Sep 07, 2006 at 16:43:18 +0200, Tomas Mecir wrote:

> >> - COUNT and COUNTA are exceptions, as they just count values - COUNT
> >> counts number values and nothing else. COUNTA also counts logical and
> >> text values.
> >
> >So why is that an exception then? It is congruent with the behavior
> >above, or did I miss anything?
> 
> Because they never attempt conversion of strings to numeric values.
> Hence, the COUNTA function would never propagate an error if it were
> to get something like "test" - whereas AVERAGEA or something, if using
> automatic conversion to numbers, would fail conversion and thus return
> an error on the same parameters.

Ah, ok, the error cases, yes. Btw, Excel interprets and counts inline
numeric strings also for COUNT. As usual.

  Eike

-- 
Automatic string conversions considered dangerous. They are the GOTO statements
of spreadsheets.  --Robert Weir on the OpenDocument formula subcommittee's list.