Forum Discussion
Can SCAN() and BYROW() be combined?
- Mar 11, 2022
It looks like it should work and, indeed, a similar formula with REDUCE does work. Unfortunately SCAN produces an array on each row, leading to an array of arrays which hasn't been implemented within the calc engine. There are two distinct approaches to overcome the problem, neither of which is that attractive.
The first is to allow SCAN to run through the 6 values as a single sequence but to reset the resulting text to null whenever the scan returns to the first column. Rather than scanning the text array, I scanned the sequence {0,1,2;3,4,5} which can both be used to look up the text to concatenate and to identify the leading column.
= SCAN("", SEQUENCE(2,3,0), LAMBDA(str,k, LET( row, 1+QUOTIENT(k,3), column, 1+MOD(k,3), chr, INDEX(data, row, column), IF(column>1,str,"")&chr ) ) )
The second approach follows your original formula more closely but, instead of allowing SCAN to build a text array, it builds a Thunk that contains the array. BYROW then creates an array of 2 thunks and if the result is passed to MAKEARRAY each thunk may be singled out by INDEX, then expanded by passing it a null parameter string and wrapped within a further INDEX, which will return a single value to be assembled into the solution array.
Thunkλ = LAMBDA(x,LAMBDA(x)) Forming a thunk: = LET( arrayϑ, Thunkλ(array), Returning its content: = arrayϑ()
I will leave it to you to judge whether the most appropriate answer to your question is 'yes' or 'no'!
OK. So I am beginning to get fed up with the arrays of arrays problem with the 365 lambda helper functions. Isn't that what one uses spreadsheets for?
Re: merging rows - Microsoft Tech Community
Every table is a list of records. Crosstabs are arrays of arrays. I would say that up to 80% of my workbooks would benefit from being able to handle arrays of arrays efficiently.
OK, thunks do offer a way around the problem and I am getting better at using them. The attached workbook has Lambda functions Thunkλ and ExpandThunkλ that I have used to form and expand the arrays of thunks, but it is still a pain and I struggle to see how I would convince a normal Excel user that this is better than 'and copy down (ugh!)'.