Hi mayoline

Trim() will only remove the leading and trailing spaces. It wont convert string to a number.

Val() will convert those characters in the beginning of a string which can be converted to a number.

Val always returns a number. Even if the conversion fails it will return 0.

Use val() whereever you want strictly numeric values (like in calculations)

In those cases where you strictly need a non-zero number, check if the value returned by val() is 0 or not and then proceed.

-Ramesh