[2005] convet sting to integer in the same format

[anhn]

First, this thread should be in more general forum. Why just in Visual Basic.NET. Share it with everyone.

Second, this is my opinion, you may agree or not:

In mathematics: "two always equals two", otherwise "two" does not belong to a numeric/counting system. That is the uniqeness of every number in a numeric system.

In a computer system: "two may not equal two".
"Byte" number two is stored by 8 bits as 00000010
"Integer" number two is stored by 16 bits as 0000000000000010
"Long" number two is stored by 32 bits as 00000000000000000000000000000010
(You know how to write down "Int64" number two and so on)
So, actually this "two" does not equal the other "two".

"2" is the visual represent of number "two" by mean of an Arabic numeric system. Yes, that is Arabic.
For a long time the western world use Rome's sytem: I II III IV V VI ... and in this sytem "II" represents number "two".
The Chinese people use "二" to represent number "two".

The Arabic numeric system originally did not have number "0". To make it becomes a complete numeric system (when doing subtraction a-b with a=b leading to the creation of 0), that "0" was added in not long ago, just 4-5 centuries and that "0" came from India in an original form of a small dot (·).[*]
(open this thread of our forum too view the discussion on the problem of missing "ZERO" in a counting system, that is used to denote columns in Excel)

Under Arabic numeric system (with 0), traditionally on writting a number, all leading 0's are dropped, because 2 = 02 = 002 = 0002 = 0...02. That is an axiom of this system.

So, by mean of a mathematics numeric system, 002 and 2 are two of infinite ways to present the number "two".
And 002 is really a number in this system.

Added: If you want a computer system display number "two" as 002 instead of 2, just ask Bill Gates, may be he can do it.
Added again: Have you ever seen a banking accouting report that comes straight from Cobol output? Most of numbers come with leading 0's.
[*] Correction: I mixed up between 0 (·) and decimal-dot (.). That was corrected as blue text above.