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JamesT
Yak Posting Veteran
97 Posts |
 Posted - 2002-05-14 : 16:36:25
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| I have an evaluation where I use IsNumeric. The exact syntax of the evaluation is:CASE ISNUMERIC(GOAL) WHEN 1 THEN GOAL ELSE 0 ENDI get a conversion error on some columns. Specifically, the data it is returning 1 on have a + sign and a . (period) in it. IsNumeric thinks those are valid numbers. Is there a way to get around this?Any help is appreciated. |
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robvolk
Most Valuable Yak
15732 Posts |
Posted - 2002-05-14 : 16:45:07
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Well, those are legal numeric symbols. If "-1234.56" is a legal numeric value, it makes little sense to say "+1234.56" is not. There is also scientific notation, "1.234E+02" is a valid numeric value also. Not to mention the $ and other currency symbols, or commas.As far as IsNumeric('+') and IsNumeric('.') testing positive, I agree, they shouldn't. But I think IsNumeric takes the approach of looking for any illegitimate characters that can't be converted to a number, instead of nothing but legitimate characters. That way, if it finds an illegal character, it can return right away and say "Yo, this isn't a number". Testing the rest of the value to see if it can be turned into a number is more time consuming, and wouldn't you just use CONVERT() for that anyway? (this is not my argument, just being devil's advocate) Technically, I *could* make the same argument for you using CASE in your example: IsNumeric returns 1 or 0, why use a CASE expression?  Edited by - robvolk on 05/14/2002 16:46:48 |
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Arnold Fribble
Yak-finder General
1961 Posts |
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IsNumeric problem