[hnlmorg]

“1/2” is a string. So “1/2”+1 is either an error because of datetype mismatch (which is terrible UX for a spreadsheet or going to mean one of the following to scenarios:

    Date plus a day

    “1/2” concatenates with “1”

The latter is wrong, the former, while unexpected, does kind of make the most sense here.

[SAI_Peregrinus]

Excel allows bare strings, so `"1/2" + 1` is a string with embedded quotation marks. So that's a third option for what to do.

[hnlmorg]

True. And that would probably make the most sense too.

A very good point you’ve made there :)

[dmurray]

Why would you favour "date plus a day" rather than "number plus a number"?

I agree Excel has to guess, and in isolation guessing that "1/2" should be parsed a date is not a terrible choice, and that parsing the individual components separately is simpler and more predictable than using the full context that it's about to be added to a number. But evaluating to 1.5 would raise few eyebrows.

[hnlmorg]

> Why would you favour "date plus a day" rather than "number plus a number"?

Date is a number though. It’s only when we print them in a human readable way that they become anything else.

Whereas 1/2 is an expression.

[fragmede]

Haven't seen "1/21" as an answer yet

[hnlmorg]

An answer where? Not sure I follow

[fragmede]

I just wanted to introduce "1/21" as an answer

[hnlmorg]

Ahh I see the confusion now. I suggested it in the comment you were replying to:

> “1/2” concatenates with “1”

…and thought you’d spotted that and was saying others had disagreed with the concatenation way of handling + operators with strings.

[fragmede]

"“1/2” concatenates with “1”" != "1/21"

[hnlmorg]

That’s literally what concatenation is.