A very interesting thread Guys, I've often required a fail-safe string to number function, but something meaty enough to extract numbers from the following types of strings without falling over.
"Cable 1.2m deep" and "Cable depth 1.2m"
To the user either string is much the same as the other, but ATOF tends to be a touch more fussy in it's requirements. I guess a character by character evaluation is called for.