>The case of "2E828" shows the difference in the design of the error handling in VAL() and CAST() functions. The CAST() never generates an error if it cannot interpret source value but instead it returns some defualt, like 0 for numeric or empty value for strings, dates, datetimes, etc.
>

CAST function performs conversion similar to the conversion performed by APPEND FROM command.

CREATE CURSOR foo (f1 c (10))
INSERT INTO foo VALUES ("0x2F")
INSERT INTO foo VALUES ("2e2")
CREATE CURSOR bar (f1 I)
APPEND FROM (DBF('foo'))
LIST

Thanks,
Aleksey.