[Gambas-user] Why is val() so roundabout?

[Eilert]

One thing that really is uncomfortable in Gambas is that val() does not 
only return Zero when there is nothing to do, but Null.

Null is a thing that cannot be evaluated without a lot of extra code. 
Sometimes, strings to be converted into values contain nothing or 
characters or stuff. In these cases, a simple Zero would do - 
val("Gambas") = "Zero" or val("34 hello") = "34" is easier to handle 
than a "maybe it will return a value, but maybe it won't".

I've tried to compensate for some cases in my current project where 
there were errors stopping the program because someone had entered 
something else than a number. I only found a solution for an empty 
string (if mystring <> "" then...), but not for the case there is 
something else than a number in the string.

So, is there a reason for this behaviour (maybe a question directly 
going to Benoit - hey, what about your finger?), or is it a bug?

Rolf