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Curious behavior of Access.Application.Eval()

Tags:

vba

ms-access

Explain why Access.Application.Eval() (commonly abbreviated as Eval()) produces a different result than just evaluating the original expression in this case:

Debug.Print Round(.575 * 100)
 57 
Debug.Print Eval("Round(.575 * 100)")
 58 

EDIT: To address GSerg's answer, the following still returns different results:

Debug.Print Eval("Round(CSng(.575) * 100)")
 57 
Debug.Print Round(CSng(.575) * 100)
 58 
like image 835
mwolfe02 Avatar asked Jun 22 '11 13:06

mwolfe02


4 Answers

That multiplication returns a different product under Eval(), but I don't understand why.

Debug.Print (.575 * 100) < 57.5
True

Debug.Print Eval("(.575 * 100) = 57.5")
-1

In the first case, the product is less than 57.5, so Round() will round it down to 57.

In the second case, the product is equal to 57.5, so Round() will apply its standard "round to even" approach to yield 58.

Edit: You all are right that Eval() coerces the literal value to a different data type.

? TypeName(.575)
Double

? Eval("TypeName(.575)")
Decimal

? Round(CDec(.575) * 100)
 58
like image 179
HansUp Avatar answered Nov 07 '22 03:11

HansUp


That is because of different float precision.

In one case the constants get recognized as Doubles, in the other as Singles.

? math.round((.575! - Int(.575!)) * 100)
 58 
? math.round((.575# - Int(.575#)) * 100)
 57 
like image 4
GSerg Avatar answered Nov 07 '22 03:11

GSerg


GSerg got me thinking. I'm starting to believe that Jet attempts to coerce decimal literals to the Currency type when Eval is called whereas VBA coerces decimal literals to the Double type. Case in point:

? Math.Round(.575 * 100)
 57 
? Math.Round(CSng(.575) * 100)
 58 
? Math.Round(CDbl(.575) * 100)
 57 
? Math.Round(CCur(.575) * 100)
 58 

? Eval("Round(.575 * 100)")
 58 
? Eval("Round(CSng(.575) * 100)")
 57 
? Eval("Round(CDbl(.575) * 100)")
 57 
? Eval("Round(CCur(.575) * 100)")
 58 
like image 2
mwolfe02 Avatar answered Nov 07 '22 04:11

mwolfe02


I don't use Access, but I would guess that the Eval evaluates the expression as an Access expression, so that the Round and Int functions may operate differently from the VBA versions?

I know from bitter experience that VBA's Round() function uses the round-to-even rounding method (aka Banker's rounding), rather than the more common round-away-from-zero-on-a-5 (aka symmetric arithmetic rounding) method.

like image 1
Gary McGill Avatar answered Nov 07 '22 04:11

Gary McGill