Question

I had a strange error in a VB6 app this morning and it all stems from the fact that IsNumeric is not working as I expected. Can someone shed some light on why? To me this seems like a bug.

This code displays 4.15877E+62 in a message box:

Dim strMessage As String
strMessage = "0415877D57"
If IsNumeric(strMessage) Then
    MsgBox CDbl(strMessage)
Else
    MsgBox "not numeric"
End If

I am guessing that the runtime engine is incorrectly thinking that the D is in fact an E?
I think this is a bug though as the exact same code in VB.NET outputs not numeric
Is this a known issue with IsNumeric?

Answer 1

If you check the VB6 docs:

Note Floating-point values can be expressed as mmmEeee or mmmDeee, in which mmm is the mantissa and eee is the exponent (a power of 10). The highest positive value of a Single data type is 3.402823E+38, or 3.4 times 10 to the 38th power; the highest positive value of a Double data type is 1.79769313486232D+308, or about 1.8 times 10 to the 308th power. Using D to separate the mantissa and exponent in a numeric literal causes the value to be treated as a Double data type. Likewise, using E in the same fashion treats the value as a Single data type.