Forum Discussion
Why does the formula VALUE("2a") return 0.0833333 ?
In my table, "2a" is a character string. I would assume that would mean putting it in the VALUE function would return an ERROR but actually it returns 0.0833333. Does anyone know why??
Yes the other solution worked for me, thank you! I was just curious about why exactly the "a" was allowed to be converted to a number. Thanks again!
5 Replies
Hi aallman
Seems like the letter "a" represents the angle in Radians that its SIN = its value i.e. ( SIN ( a ) = a ) which is 0.0416667 rad = 1/24 rad = 2.3873 degrees. If preceded by a number (X) where 0 < X < 24 the result of VALUE is just the multiplication of X times a. This has something to do whith 1 hour per 24 hours a day (1/24).
The bottom line it does not matter just ignore it.Have the solution I provided in your other post worked with you?
Have a good day.
Yes the other solution worked for me, thank you! I was just curious about why exactly the "a" was allowed to be converted to a number. Thanks again!
I don't think multiples of an angle a is quite the right interpretation since "a" by itself doesn't get interpreted and "23a" is fine whereas "25a" returns an error.
You are on the right track with 24 hours per day. It's interpreting "2a" as "2:00 AM".
Here are some additional examples where I've included another copy of the column formatted as a Time column:
aallman , Refer doc, what all can happen with text datatype
See also this documentation including relevant examples related to time:
