well - the question is - does it break existing code
certainly, when we went from v10 to v11, several functions were updated to allow unicode support
the behaviour of many things changed - the "drop-in" functionality rule was bent all to hell
personally, this is a function that i rarely use
i can see using it for user input, primarily
which means that, before i pass a string to the function,
i have to do a lot of pre-parsing to ensure the user doesn't think "xyzzy" is a number
i have to test or limit the number of digits and, in some cases, the format of the string
i might also use a function like this to convert text file info
i think the same rules would apply
at least, that's if i am writing a real-world app
if i am writing a trivial, the rules can be loser :P