Why is Excel VBA letting me multiply strings?

[GBarnes]

I WANT Excel to tell me that I can't multiply a string. What am I missing?

Option Explicit

Sub why()
Dim myVariable As String
Debug.Print VarType(myVariable), TypeName(myVariable), myVariable
myVariable = 42 'Not "42"
myVariable = myVariable * 3 '126   Why?
Debug.Print VarType(myVariable), TypeName(myVariable), myVariable
End Sub

 

[AlphaFrog]

Implicit Coercion

Many programming languages support the conversion of a value into another of a different data type. This kind of type conversions can be implicitly or explicitly made. Implicit conversion, which is also called coercion, is automatically done. Explicit conversion, which is also called casting, is performed by code instructions. This code treats a variable of one data type as if it belongs to a different data type. The languages that support implicit conversion define the rules that will be automatically applied when primitive compatible values are involved.

 

[JLGWhiz]

there are several dissertations on this by people like John Walkenbach and Chip Pearson and others where they discuss how a number is a number by any other name and VBA will treat a number as a number, with exceptions. But they are generally referring to math functions when they talk about the numbers being numbers no matter what else you call them. The string data type allows us to use numbers for such things as sheet names or to use leading zeros, etc. But they are still numbers.