The NUMVAL Function

The NUMVAL function returns the numeric value represented by the character string specified by argument-1. Leading and trailing spaces are ignored. The type of this function is numeric.

General Format

Arguments

Argument-1 must be an alphanumeric
or national

literal or an alphanumeric

or national

data item whose content has one of the following two formats:

or

where space is a string of zero or more spaces and digit is a string of one to 18 digits.
The total number of digits in argument-1 must not exceed 18.
If the DECIMAL POINT IS COMMA clause is specified in the Special-Names paragraph, a comma must be used in argument-1 rather than a decimal point.

Returned Values

The returned value is the numeric value represented by argument-1.
The number of digits returned is 18.
Floating-point format is used for numeric non-integer results.