Re: [libreoffice-users] IF w/ Regular Expression

At 14:05 07/02/2013 -0800, Joel Madero wrote:
> I have enabled regular expressions in LibreOffice settings but still 
> am unable to get this one to work. Here is my line:
> IF(N200="*regression*",1,0)
>
> Not sure what I'm missing.

What you are missing, I think, is defining your problem!  You have 
fallen into the error that is not at all uncommon amongst 
enquirers.  You have shown us a formula which you tell us does not 
work.  You have not told us what you were hoping it would do for you, 
leaving us to guess from the formula itself.  But the one thing we 
can be absolutely sure of - we have your assurance for this - is that 
this formula does not define what you are trying to do, since it does 
not succeed.

In any case, I don't know what regular expression you think you have 
supplied here: the asterisk is used to match zero or more of the 
character preceding it.  There is no character before your first 
asterisk; as regards the second, are you expecting a match for 
*regressio, along with *regression, *regressionn, *regressionnn, and so on?

The IF() function is a bit of a red herring.  The essence of your 
formula is the logical expression N200="*regression*".  This has a 
logical result (which, incidentally, is identical to the result of 
your IF).  But there is no facility to invoke regular expressions in 
the logical "=" operator: it will give the answer TRUE (or 1) if and 
only if the two operands are equal.  So you should get TRUE or 1 if 
N200 is exactly "*regression*" and FALSE or 0 otherwise.

There are a number of functions which allow regular expressions (see 
the help text), but "=" is not one of them.

I trust this helps.

Brian Barker


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