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