Re: [office-formula] Conversion to Logical from Text

["David A. Wheeler" <dwheeler@dwheeler.com>]

Eike:
> | Text, level 3 and higher applications examine the text; if the text
> | matches the text "TRUE" ignoring case, then return TRUE, if the text
> | matches the text "FALSE" ignoring case, then return FALSE, otherwise
> | return Error. Note that case is ignored no matter what the value of
> | case-sensitive is.  It is implementation-defined what happens if the
> | text does not match TRUE or FALSE in a case-sensitive manner- it may
> | return a logical value or an Error.
> 
> I think that's wrong and even worse than trying to interpret text as
> numbers because it will definitely not work in different locales.
> Instead, we should define that similar to "Conversion to Number", e.g.
> 
> Text: An application may return FALSE, an error value, or the results of
> its attempt to convert the text value to a logical (and fall back to
> FALSE or error if it fails to do so). Note that portable spreadsheet
> files cannot depend on any particular conversion, and shall avoid
> implicit conversions from text to logical.

Okay, but please capture in a NOTE that some applications implement the algorithm above.  Some implementors may want to implement that algorithm for backwards-combatibility (sic) with really nasty spreadsheets.

--- David A. Wheeler