Interesting discovery: The VALUE() function performs math

[ScottWorld]

This is an interesting little discovery regarding the VALUE() function.

On the formula field reference page, it makes it seem like VALUE() will simply extract all the numbers from a text string.

But this isn’t true under all circumstances.

The VALUE() function will sometimes perform mathematical functions as well, if certain symbols are included within the text string!

For example, the formula VALUE("**6hxyzb0**00987**") will extract all the numbers and return 6000987. This is expected.

But the formula VALUE("**6hxyzb0%%00987**") will return 60009.87. The very presence of a percentage symbol in the text string makes VALUE() multiply the extracted numbers by 1%.

Similarly, if the VALUE() function sees a dash in the text string, VALUE() interprets the dash as a minus sign and it multiplies the extracted numbers by -1.

So the formula VALUE("123-XYZABC") will return -123.

Interestingly enough, if it sees 2 dashes, it multiples the 2 negative ones together to get a positive 1.

So the formula VALUE("123-XYZ-ABC") will return a positive 123.

So it is actually counting up all the dashes in the text string and multiplying each one by negative 1.

There might be other strange mathematical functions happening with the VALUE() function as well, but those are the 2 math functions that I discovered today.

These sorts of mathematical functions should probably be clarified in the support article.

[ScottWorld]

Wow, this problem gets SIGNIFICANTLY WORSE THAN THIS.

Check out what @CT3 found in this thread:

CT3:

The VALUE() formula seems to be responding to memory units of measurement. It’s actually reading 2020 MAINT TB Z as “2020 times 1TB”, IE 2020 x 1099511627776 (the amount of bytes in one Terabyte) = 2221013488107520. Same thing for INSP 2021 A MB West, which it’s reading as “2021 times 1MB”

Long story short: The VALUE() function is completely dysfunctional and broken in Airtable, and should not be used because it cannot be relied upon.

[CT3]

Yikes! When I was trying to troubleshoot this, I also discovered the scenario you mentioned that happens upon inclusion of a dash, ie, VALUE(“1-5”) returns -15. I figured you could loosely interpret that as expected behavior—it was recognizing the dash and kind of “leaving it in” to create a negative number.

However your discovery here that it’s actually multiplying by all these “hidden” values is definitely unexpected and nothing I’ve come across before… Absolutely leads you to wonder what other surprises might be in store using VALUE().

[ScottWorld]

CT3:

Absolutely leads you to wonder what other surprises might be in store using VALUE().

Ha, no kidding! Sadly, the entire Airtable platform is filled with tons of unexpected & unwanted surprises.

[Justin_Barrett]

Just so that the solution comes full circle, here’s how to address the extraction issue mentioned above using regular expressions:

VALUE(REGEX_REPLACE("**6hxyzb0%%00987**", "\\D", ""))

That will remove any non-digit values in the string, leaving only the numbers, and then convert the result into an actual number.