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

[Patrick Durusau <patrick@durusau.net>]

Andreas,

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.

That is I think conversions are already specified, at least as I am 
reading the text.

Is that not your understanding?

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

-- 
Patrick Durusau
patrick@durusau.net
Chair, V1 - US TAG to JTC 1/SC 34
Convener, JTC 1/SC 34/WG 3 (Topic Maps)
Editor, OpenDocument Format TC (OASIS), Project Editor ISO/IEC 26300
Co-Editor, ISO/IEC 13250-1, 13250-5 (Topic Maps)