In article ,
Harlan Grove wrote:

Wrapping boolean expressions inside N() is another alternative, possibly
clearer, but it eats a nested function call level, so I don't use it.

Also, IsNumber(N(...)) always returns True; that was my first try to get
around the fact that IsNumber(Left(...,2)) always returned False, though the
first two digits of that string was sometimes a number. Eventually I did
run across a usage of IsNumber(-Left(...,2)), which accomplished the
discrimination I wanted (between 1-digit and 2-digit leading numerics in a
date-derived string).

By the way, in Excel XP, IsDate("50-1") returns True; the above code was
originally part of a workaround for that problem.

--
Randy Hudson