In This Topic
You can use functions in expressions to perform additional tasks. Most functions require a set of input arguments, but all functions evaluate to a single variant value. All functions share the following general syntax:
FUNCTIONNAME(arg1,arg2,...argN)
where the following rules apply:
- FUNCTIONNAME - must be a valid function name
- () - the function name must be followed by an open and close parentheses, even if the function takes no arguments.
- , - the comma is the only allowed delimiter, which can be used to separate the function arguments.
Some arguments of a function may be optional. These arguments are enclosed in square brackets ("[" and "]").
Certain functions would expect arguments of certain types, or arguments that are castable to these types. In the documentation we use a simple prefix before each argument to denote the variant type that the function will internally cast the variant to. Following is a list of the used prefixes:
Prefix |
Description |
var |
Any variant. The documentation states if there are other limitations. |
b |
Variant castable to a boolean |
f |
Variant castable to a floating point number |
n |
Variant castable to an integer number |
s |
Variant castable to string |
dt |
Variant castable to data time |
ts |
Variant castable to time span |
arr |
Variant array |
The currently available functions are logically grouped in the following categories:
Type Functions
Logical Functions
Mathematical Functions
Trigonometric Functions
Date Time Functions
Time Span Functions
Text Functions
Array Functions
Bitwise Functions
Depending on whether a function supports chaining or aggregation, functions can be further classified as Chain_Functions or Aggregate_Functions.
Chain functions are functions, which can perform operations on the variants contained in an array and return an array than contains transformed variants. Chaining helps you perform a series of transformations on the variants contained in one array, by passing the function result as an argument to another chain function. For example:
The following expression:=UPPER(REPLACE(ARRAY("#nevron#","#chart#"),"#","")) will return an array containing "NEVRON" and "CHART". First, the REPLACE function has removed all occurrences of '#' in all strings and then the UPPER function converted all strings to upper case.
Chain functions support passing a non array variant too. For example:
The following expression:=UPPER(REPLACE("#nevron#","#","")) returns "NEVRON".
In the documentation the arguments on which a function supports chaining are highlighted in blue.
Aggregate functions are functions, which take an array(s) of values and return a single value - i.e. aggregate a set of values in some way. For example:
The following expression:=SUM(ARRAY(10,20,30)) returns 60.
The following expression:=JOIN(ARRAY("nevron","chart")," ") returns "nevron chart".
A function may have more than one argument that is used in the aggregation. For example:
The following expression:=SUM(ARRAY(10,20,30),10) returns 70.
The following expression:=SUM(ARRAY(10,20,30),ARRAY(10,20,30,10)) returns 130.
In the documentation the arguments on which a function supports aggregation are highlighted in red.
See Also