---
title: "QQ - What is the difference between ICAST and WILDICAST?"
slug: "qq-what-is-the-difference-between-icast-and-wildicast"
updated: 2022-09-27T17:23:32Z
published: 2022-09-27T17:23:32Z
canonical: "docs.datajet.app/qq-what-is-the-difference-between-icast-and-wildicast"
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.datajet.app/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# QQ - What is the difference between ICAST and WILDICAST?

This question is relevant for the following functions:

- Engineering | Functions | String | ICAST
- Engineering | Functions | String | WildICast
- Engineering | Functions | String | DCAST
- Engineering | Functions | String | WildDCAST

The ICAST and DCAST functions require that the source string data contains data that is only numeric - if there are any non-numeric characters in the source data then the function will return null for each record.

The WildICast and WildDCast functions are able to strip out numeric data from alphanumeric source data. So for example, WildDCast could be used to turn Alphanumeric Geo-Coordinates into decimal coordinates ready for use in calculations:

![](https://cdn.document360.io/73b6469b-c1e4-47e9-aa65-986c8ebd17ca/Images/Documentation/image-1664299161964.png)

Likewise, WildICast can be used to filter out any non-numeric data from a field:

![](https://cdn.document360.io/73b6469b-c1e4-47e9-aa65-986c8ebd17ca/Images/Documentation/image-1664299377206.png)