Is there a way to check if a column exists and if it does include in a formula

[Griz2]

Sometimes the data will have a column called "XYZ" and other times the column will be called "ABC".  Is there a way to check for a column in an ifelse statement or maybe column position in an import from Excel and then rename or in a DataMan?  Any clever ideas?

[Enrico]

Hi Griz, 

yes, there are multiple way to perform the changes of the attributes name using a formula, the one that I suggest you is the following.

Let's take as example a data set containing 3 attributes:

• CLIMBER, name of the climber
• Best Sport, the highest sport grade reached by the athlete 
• Best Boulder, the highest boulder grade reached by the athlete

 

You decide that "Best" is not representative enough and you want to change the names of all the attributes containing "Best" by replacing "Best" with "Highest".

To do that you need to:

• Insert $names on the left side of the formula
• Insert the formula that you want to use on the right side, in this case:
   ifelse(find ($names, "Best") == 1, replace ($names, "Best", "Highest"), $names)

 

I hope it will be useful to you 

 

[Griz2]

WOW! That worked perfectly.  Thank you.  Where would I find in the documentation the $names formula?  What exactly is the $names?

[Sara]

Hello Griz, 

thank you for opening this topic on our Community.

By specifying the $names parameter in the left-hand side member of the formula bar in the Data Manager task, you can bulk edit the dataset's attributes' headers.

You can find more information about this specific use case on the technical documentation at the following link: Computing Formulas in the Data Manager (rulex.ai).

If you need further clarification, don't hesitate to contact us!

Have a wonderful weekend.