“FIND! LEN!”
“LEFT! RIGHT!”
Inoue and I dealt with the string functions smoothly. The forest was cut apart one cell at a time. Speaking of things going well, they were going well, but there was still a lot to go.
“There’s just no end to it.”
“Why would they make such a sheet? I have no idea.”
“Really? I used to write sheets like this.”
I replied while processing the VLOOKUP in the shade.
“It’s common to do this in advertisement data processing, because advertisement banners are made up of multiple elements.”
“Is that so?”
“For example, let’s say you’re advertising a pharmacy job, right? Even in the job banner, whether the model is male or female, whether there’s low overtime or high hourly wages, etc. It also includes multiple factors such as the colour pattern, which designer made it, and so on.”
“I see, why is it all just a bunch of string functions then?”
“The ad serving system allows you to name your ads for management purposes. The naming method depends on the individual, but for example ‘Female model 1_Hourly rate 3_Green’ can be created by joining the elements using underscores. Then, Excel, which does the tallying, uses the string function to break down the strings. Of course, it is possible to manage them by ID and pull the information from a master sheet using VLOOKUP. Oh, you could also used INDEX/MATCH”
That was dangerous. Without Saito around, I wanted to avoid an ideological argument.
“Hmmm, I see why. But, this user seems to be new to us. If you use SPLIT, you could do it in one function and, even if you don’t, you should at least use REGEXEXTRACT.”
“S-Split? Regex? What are those?”
“Ah, so Takahashi-san doesn’t know about them either. It’s still early days in your life as a worker, huh~. It’s no wonder you don’t know.”
Inoue made a face that couldn’t hide her sense of superiority. Damn it, this is really frustrating. What the hell are split and regex? It’s frustrating, but also clear that not knowing isn’t good. I had no choice but to ask for guidance. Asking is only a temporary shame, not asking is a lifetime of shame. I asked as nicely as I could.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t afford to trouble Inoue-san when I encounter these functions, would you be able to explain them to me?”
“Fufu, that’s fine. But, why don’t we wait until this quest is over? The users are waiting for us.”
That was certainly true. More than half the string functions were still left. I found it frustrating that there were still so many functions in Google Spreadsheets that I didn’t know about, but at the same time, I was excited that there was still more to explore.