The Numeric Editor

A text cell opens in a memo, an image in a picture viewer, a blob in a hex editor. A number has no larger form to open — but it does have something else worth offering: somewhere to work the value out.

The Numeric Editor is a calculator on the cell.

To open it: click the … button in a numeric cell, or right-click the cell and choose Numeric Editor.

The current value is loaded into the display, and the keypad drops down as the dialog opens, so it is ready to use rather than a click away. Type digits or click buttons — both appear in the display, with the behaviour any calculator has. Click OK to write the result back to the cell, or Cancel to leave it alone.

Which cells it appears on

Columns the application reads as numbers: integers of every width, floating-point, currency and BCD. It does not appear on read-only columns — unlike text or an image, there is nothing to be gained from opening a number just to look at it.

Note this follows the column's mapped type, not its storage class. A column declared INTEGER that happens to hold text in this row is still a numeric column, and the button still appears. What the cell actually holds is the Value Inspector's question.

Writing the value back

The cell is only written when the value actually changed. Opening the calculator on a number and closing with OK leaves the cell exactly as it was, and a null cell is not turned into a nought by being looked at.

The write goes through the normal edit-and-post cycle, exactly as typing into the cell would: the row enters edit state and the change is posted with the rest of the row. This is unlike the Value Inspector, which writes immediately with its own UPDATE.

An integer column receives the result rounded to a whole number; everything else receives it as a floating-point value.

Very large integers

The calculator works in floating point, which cannot tell consecutive whole numbers apart above about 9,000,000,000,000,000 — two to the fifty-third. A cell holding an integer larger than that is refused before the dialog opens:

This value is too large for the calculator to hold exactly.

It is refused rather than quietly rounded, because a key or an identifier that large is precisely the value you would least like altered. Edit such a cell directly instead.

See also: Editing table data · The Value Inspector