Value Types

Note: This draft page is under construction 🚧

In IronCalc a value, a result of a calculation, can be one of the following.

Numbers

Numbers in IronCalc are IEEE 754 double-precision.

Numbers are only displayed up to 15 significant figures. That's why =0.1+0.2 gives 0.3.

Also, numbers are compared up to 15 significant figures. So =IF(0.1+0.2=0.3, "Valid", "Invalid") gives Valid.

However, =0.3-0.2-0.1 will not give exactly 0 in IronCalc.

Casting into numbers

Strings and booleans are sometimes converted to numbers:

=1+"2" => 3

Some functions cast in weird ways:

=SUM(1,TRUE) => 1 and =SUM(1,"1") => 1

And =SUM(1,A1) => 1 (where A1 contains TRUE or "1")

Sometimes the conversion happens as might be expected. For example, ="123"+1 is 124, =SQRT("4") is 2 and =SQRT(TRUE) is 1.

Some functions, however, are more strict. For example, =BIN2DEC(TRUE) gives the #VALUE! error.

Dates and times

IronCalc uses numbers to represent dates and times.

The integer part of the number represents the date, as a count of days since the fixed starting date of December 30, 1899.

The fractional part of the number represents the time of day. 0.0 corresponds to 00:00:00 (midnight) and 0.5 corresponds to 12:00:00 (noon).

Strings

Complex numbers

Using IronCalc, a complex number is a string of the form "1+j3".

Booleans

Casting from numbers

Errors

Casting from strings

"#N/A" => #N/A

Arrays

Ranges

References

A reference is a pointer to a single cell or a range of cells. The reference can either be entered manually, for example "A4", or as the result of a calculation, such as the OFFSET Function or the INDIRECT Function. A reference can also be built, for example with the Colon (:) Operator.