Re: XLParser treats text fields as numeric fields

On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 10:34 AM, Richard Schoen
<richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Yep, un-typed data bad :-)

Might be a good idea to put the data into MS Access instead of Excel.

Then the data can be fully types and converted correctly when it's read back.

Well, Excel DOES have explicit types. It has Unicode text, and it has
(basically) double-precision float. It absolutely does NOT mix these
up. It is true that distinguishing between numbers meant as dates and
numbers not meant as dates is dependent on the formatting.

I believe the misconception that Excel somehow mixes up character and
numeric values comes from the way Excel *loads* untyped data. It has
what amounts to a regex-based parser (the same kind of thing that
everyone else seems to try to build for themselves) to guess the type
when the data source does not have explicit types.

This is a completely and utterly separate issue from how Excel *stores* data.

John