VBA: curious usage of recursion

Some time ago I was asked to create a VBA function that would calculate a check digit for an input number, using the following procedure:
It was clear that a recursive solution could be used and I wrote the following function:

Function chk(ByVal x As String) As Long
                      Dim i As Long
                      For i = 1 To Len(x)
                          chk = chk + Mid(x, i, 1)
                      Next
                      If chk > 9 Then chk = chk(chk)
                      End Function

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I wondered that the compiler did not find an error in the expression...
...having "understood" that the first and the third uses of "chk" relate to the implicit local variable (the return value for the function) and the second "chk" is a call to the function.  I also appreciated that the function argument was being converted to proper type without any additional programming efforts.

Using in VBScript

Then I studied whether type declarations of variables could be avoided so that the function could be used in VBScript where all variables have Variant type.

If a function type is not declared (i.e. if it is declared as Variant by default) it leads to endless recursion because the right side of the operator...
...is treated as string concatenation and, after Next, chk is a string equal to x.  This can be avoided by explicit conversion of a digit:

chk = chk + CLng(Mid(x, i, 1))

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or by implicit conversion in numeric operation:

    chk = chk - Mid(x, i, 1)
                      Next
                      
                      chk = -chk

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If the ByVal keyword is omitted:

Function chk(x As String) As Long 'causes compiler error

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...then the compiler raises an error "ByRef argument type mismatch".  But if the argument type is also omitted then there is no error.

Finally, the check-digit producing function for VBScript looks like this:

Function chk(x)
                      Dim i
                      For i = 1 To Len(x)
                          chk = chk + CLng(Mid(x, i, 1))
                      Next
                      If chk > 9 Then chk = chk(chk)
                      End Function

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Another purpose of this article is to show once again that a function name can be used as a normal variable within the function code; i.e., there is no need to declare an auxiliary variable as some programmers do:

Function chk(x)
                      Dim i, aux  'aux is actually redundant'
                      For i = 1 To Len(x)
                          aux = aux + CLng(Mid(x, i, 1))
                      Next
                      chk = aux
                      If chk > 9 Then chk = chk(chk)
                      End Function

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