da-zero (9/27/2010)
Good question, although I seem to remember that I've seen similar ones.But I don't think that considering scientific notation as numeric is stupid. 2e1 is just another way writing 20, so it is still a number.
I think the reason why you can't immediately convert it to an int is because of how SQL Server handles the scientific notation. But I can't seem to find any references on that.
And how exactly do you know that '2e1' is a "scientific notation"? Could be there by accident so the value should actually have been 21 (blackjack anyone?). Now that error just slipped us by because SQL "tries" to think.
/T