“GAOOOOOOOOOOH!!!!”
The SPLIT function, which had transformed from a slime into a dog, made a growling sound. Inoue ran towards the exit of the sheet without a moment’s hesitation. It looked like it was going to be dangerous, so I followed her out of the sheet. The functions wouldn’t follow us out of the sheet.
“Haa…haa…you really did it…”
“I’m sorry, I though I could do it as it didn’t seem that difficult…”
“What I told you was just the basics.”
With that, Inoue wrote on the wall outside and began to explain. I was impressed, not knowing we could write on the outside. However, Inoue said ‘Ah, not really. But it’s fine’, so maybe she shouldn’t have written on the outside.
=SPLIT(Text, Delimiter, [Split on each character], [Remove empty text])
“The explanation I gave before was just the basics, there are two more arguments. To be honest, I haven’t seen them very often, so I thought it would be fine not to mention them. For both options, you can enter TRUE/FALSE, if you don’t put anything in for them, they will be treated as TRUE.”
“I feel like the option to delete empty text makes sense. When there are two consecutive delimiters, should the space between them be considered an element or not?”
“That’s right. For example, something like this.”
=SPLIT(“ポプテピピック”, “ピ”, TRUE, FALSE)
ポプテ (Blank) ック
“If no option is specified, it will be separated into ‘ポプテ’ and ‘ック’, but if you specify FALSE for [Remove empty text], it will assume that there is a space between “ピピ” and the output will have an element with a space in the middle.”
“I see, I get it now. What is the other one then, [Split on each character]? I have no idea what it might be.”
“It’s complicated, isn’t it? First, let me explain the basic behaviour of SPLIT. Takahashi-san, what do you think would be the result of this execution?”
=SPLIT(“Kagoshima Shibushi-shi Shibushi-cho Shibushi 2-1-1 Shibushi Branch Shibushi City Hall”, “Shibu”)
“T-This is confusing. May I write it down?”
“Eh……well, I guess it’s fine.”
It seems like we really shouldn’t be writing here. But I couldn’t do it verbally, so I wrote it down.
“Kagoshima” “shi-shi” “shi-cho” “shi 2-1-1” “shi Branch” “shi City Hall”
“Like this?”
“That is incorrect. The correct answer is this.”
“Kagoshima” “-shi” “-cho” “2-1-1” “Branch” “City Hall”
“Huh? Why is there no ‘shi’? Aren’t we splitting by ‘Shibu’?”
“Actually, the default behaviour of SPLIT is a little different than what you think. Instead of cutting at ‘Shibu’, it’s cutting at ‘Shi’ and ‘Bu’. It might be easier to understand if you set [Remove empty text] to FALSE.”
=SPLIT(“Kagoshima Shibushi-shi Shibushi-cho Shibushi 2-1-1 Shibushi Branch Shibushi City Hall”, “Shibushi”, TRUE, FALSE)
“Kagoshima” (Blank) (Blank) “-shi” (Blank) (Blank) “-cho” (Blank) (Blank) “2-1-1” (Blank) (Blank) “Branch” (Blank) (Blank) “City Hall”
“Understand? [Split on each character] is a parameter that splits ‘Shibu’ into ‘Shi’ and ‘Bu’. If you don’t specify the parameter, it defaults to TRUE, so it will split the text on either. If you want to split it as a whole, you have to set the parameter to FALSE.”
=SPLIT(“Kagoshima Shibushi-shi Shibushi-cho Shibushi 2-1-1 Shibushi Branch Shibushi City Hall”, “Shibu”, FALSE)
“If you write it this way, the result will be exactly as Takashi-san wrote at the beginning.”
“Kagoshima” “shi-shi” “shi-cho” “shi 2-1-1” “shi Branch” “shi City Hall”
“Oh, I see. I get it now. It’s not intuitive, is it? The SPLIT function.”
“Honestly, you’re right, but our job is to understand how to use these functions and process them. Now that you understand, let’s get to processing. Please wear this.”
Inoue gave me an elbow length protector that people who trained police dogs wore on their arms.
Our battle afterwards was extremely plain with no fantasy elements. I kept being bitten on the arm by the SPLIT function while running away. To be honest, the protector stopped its fanges from penetrating into my arm, but if a large dog bites you and pulls you around, your whole body will hurt, from my shoulders to my arms. Inoue’s strategy was to take advantage of the opportunity to process it, but she had trouble with the SPLIT rampaging around. All I could do was yell ‘It hurts, it hurts’ as it bit my arm and swung me around.
When I though I had finally taken care of it, it split into three smaller dogs. Inoue and I waved our arms and legs to threaten them and, eventually, we managed to deal with the smaller dogs while only being bitten on the protected arm. Although it was a simple quest, it was extremely physically demanding.
Author’s Notes.
Click here for the reference.
https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3094136?hl=ja
Actually, I’ve never had to use this option myself. My text is usually separated by easy to understand symbols like commas.