How List.PositionOF works

[Anonymous]

But this result seems strange only to me?

For the moment I do not exploit what does not fit me.
I would like to see if anyone else has the same impression as me.

[CNENFRNL]

More myths about this mysterious ""(zero-length string)

[Anonymous]

this seems to me consistent with the fact that the string "" does not contain any characters and therefore there is no corresponding number: it does not exist in the ascii table
do not you think?

[CNENFRNL]

@Anonymous Yes, my point is since no ascii code is assigned to "", why Text.PositionOf returns positions of "" in "aba", whereas "aba" doesn't split at those positions?

Nowhere to find an explanation to the mechanism to parse "" by PQ. 🤔

[Anonymous]

Hi @CNENFRNL ,

I came up with this idea, to give a possible explanation to your interesting observation:
"" is obviously not a character but it is a text (empty but text, while the "empty" character does not exist).

If "" could be used as a character it would become a sort of wildcard like the "?".
In fact, if you use the function:
Text.EndsWith ("abc", "c")
gives TRUE
and the same happens with

Text.EndsWith ("abc", "") -> TRUE.

From this we could derive that "c" = "" 🙂 and if it holds for c, it holds for any other character.

[Icey]

Hi @Anonymous ,

Why can't we think of it this way: “abc” ends with "" when in " Text.EndsWith("abc", "") " and "abc" ends with "c" when in " Text.EndsWith("abc", "c") "?

There can be a "" behind "c" in "abc", right?🤔

Best Regards,

Icey

If this post helps, then please consider Accept it as the solution to help the other members find it more quickly.

[Anonymous]

<<If "" could be used as a character it would become a sort of wildcard like the "?".>>

What was written was to prove that "" is a string and not a single character, because if it were(*) there would be the contradictory result that "" is equal to any character.

However, apart from these dialectical joke, what I wanted to point out is that the

Text.PositionOf ("abc", ...)
finds only 3 empty substrings and not 4 as I would have expected (also for symmetry),

If you use Text.PositionOf (text.reverse ("abc"), ...) you get the same result)

PS

I observed this, in my opinion strange, behavior while trying to find a custom function for the VLOOKUP

(*)

if "" is considered, as it actually should, as a string instead there is no contradiction as there is not in these cases:

Text.EndsWith("abc","c")=true

Text.EndsWith("abc","bc")=true

from which the only logical consequence that can be drawn is that one of the two strings is a substring of the other, but not that they are equal

[Jimmy801]

Hello

it's strange and funny at the same time. And seeing this

also kinda wrong?

Jimmy

[Anonymous]

a hint

Spoiler

[Anonymous]

a second hint

Spoiler