Sorry for the newbie question, however this might be an easy one.

I have the following senerio
SFee = Val(Fees.Text)
Where in a text box called Fees.Text I have a string value of "1,000.00"
I have the following:
Dim SFee as Long

When I run this, SFee comes out to 1 instead of 1000. Any idea what I am
doing wrong?

Thanks in Advance
LS

Hi

The problem is due to the thousands seperator, as far as Val is concerned
the number ends at the comma.

Try SFee - Val(replace(fees.text, ",", ""))
If this program is going to be used in other countries you should get the
regional seperator character and use that instead of the comma above.


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Per MSDN:

The Val function stops reading the string at the first character it can't
recognize as part of a number. Symbols and characters that are often
considered parts of numeric values, such as dollar signs and commas, are not
recognized.

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Try this ...

Private Sub Command1_Click()

   Dim d As Double

  'nothing to do if empty
   If Len(Text1.Text) > 0 Then

     'if val works, then
      If Val(Text1.Text) > 0 Then

         'cdbl should as well
         d = (CDbl(Text1.Text))
         Print d, TypeName(d)
      End If
   End If

End Sub



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As Dave suggested, Val() is not a good idea if you plan to run your code in
other locales, i.e. other countries. Something like CDbl() will also convert
text to number, but will honour both the 'triple separator' and the decimal
separator used in the current locale. Hence, it's ideal for what you want.

Val(), on the other hand, only accepts the '.' decimal separator, and does
not accept 'triple separators' at all. Some people say that Val() (and also
Str()) is therefore not locale-aware, but a more useful interpretation is
that it honours the programming locale rather than the user's regional
locale. Str(), for instance, can be used to reliably format a number for a
SQL or MDX query, but CStr cannot.

There are some quirks though. Both Val() and CDbl() accept E-format numbers
(e.g. 1.23E+3), which can be really annoying if you only want to accept
simple decimals. Also, as you've already found, Val() doesn't report any
errors. It simply stops reading when it finds a character it can't convert.

        Tony Proctor

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On Fri, 13 May 2005 19:33:30 +0100, "Tony Proctor"
<tony_proctor@aimtechnology_NoMoreSPAM_.com> wrote:

Eh ?
Surely that is slightly misleading
Val() and Str() always use '.' as the decimal separator
- regardless of where one is programming

The other thing is that Val() is very tolerant of dirty data
- like the stuff users input
- whereas CDbl() will blow on anything non numeric

A programming language has it's own conceptual locale, and this controls the
format of decimal numbers (VB always uses '.'), the format of date constants
(VB uses #US-format#), the format of boolean constants (always
"True"/"False"), and the character set (Unicode for Unicode). This is
independent of the user's own regional locale since languages have to be
portable.

The same applies to other 'programming interfaces', e.g. SQL, MDX, XML, etc.
The Posix standard for national language support even defines a special 'C
locale' that can be selected. The point I was trying to make is that rather
than Val/Str simply being anachronisms from early VB, they can be viewed as
a way of manipulating decimal numbers in the programming locale. The example
I gave of generating a SQL query with a floating point value in it
illustrates it quite nicely. If you format the number using CStr() then the
query will fail in regional locales that use a ',' decimal separator. Using
Str() (however naff the function is) at least guarantees that the
representation matches the SQL programming locale.

We both know the pro's and con's of the different interfaces. I'm merely
advocating a different interpretation of their differences

        Tony Proctor

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On Sat, 14 May 2005 11:20:39 +0100, "Tony Proctor"
<tony_proctor@aimtechnology_NoMoreSPAM_.com> wrote:

Show quoteHide quoteI am advocating  an understanding  of :
   Date$, Time$, Val() and Str$()

There is a lot be to said for knowing what one is doing

Just happens that I believe that localization should be up to the
programmer.

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