Replace every third occurence of a character

[anjbauer1993]

I have a string that I would would like to replace every third " " with "}, {". Below is an example of what I have currently and what I'm looking for.

current:

{24 1 0 188 1 0 190 1 0 192 1 0}

{724 1 0 259 1 0 430 1 0 376 1 0 228 1 0 194 1 0}

desired result:

{24 1 0}, {188 1 0}, {190 1 0}, {192 1 0}

{724 1 0}, {259 1 0}, {430 1 0}, {376 1 0}, {228 1 0}, {194 1 0}

Every string is made up of groups of three integers, but what's making this difficult is the fact that not every row has the same number of these groups. In another project I created a loop using the method described in this link, which I'm sure I could implement here but I have to believe that there is a simpler way of accomplishing this. Any help would be appreciated.

[Nolock · Accepted solution]

Hi @anjbauer1993,

I have a solution for you.

Split every text into a list by space, generate triples of the list, and combine these triples in a string again. The solution also contains your sample data.

let
    Source = Table.FromRows(Json.Document(Binary.Decompress(Binary.FromText("i45WqjYyUTBUMFAwtLCA0JYGUNoIRNcqxeoAFZlDVRmZWoJpE2OIKmNzM4i4EUy3CVRXLAA=", BinaryEncoding.Base64), Compression.Deflate)), let _t = ((type text) meta [Serialized.Text = true]) in type table [Column1 = _t]),
    Triples = Table.AddColumn(
        Source, 
        "Triples", 
        (_) =>
            let
                // split text by space
                CurList = Text.Split([Column1], " "),
                // get count of values
                CurListLength = List.Count(CurList),
                // go through the list and group triples together
                Triples = List.Generate(
                    () => 0,
                    each _ < CurListLength,
                    each _ + 3,
                    each Text.Combine(List.Range(CurList, _, 3), " ")
                ),
                // combine triples
                CombineToText = Text.Combine(Triples, "}, {")
            in CombineToText
    )
in
    Triples

And a screenshot of the result.