Index Array with type conversion function like “Scan from String"

[CBlum]

Index Array with type conversion function like “Scan from String”

[RavensFan]

"Conversation"  or do you mean "conversion"?  (You may want to ask the moderator to edit your post so that it can be searched for properly.)

It looks like you are trying to make a LabVIEW primitive work differently in the lower image than it usually does.  It looks like you are trying to use a Scan from String function which works on strings and make it work on multiple elements of a 1-D string array?

I agree the lower image "looks" better in that it is more compact, but it feels to me like it would add some confusion as to is happening because of the Scan from String function being used.

[CBlum]

Yes, please changed it.  No it should not be used the string function, it must be changed the function symbol to array. You are right..

[Darren]

CBlum, I fixed the misspelling. If you want me to replace the image in the post with one that includes the array function imagery in the second picture, then post an updated image as a comment and I can update the image in the original post.

[CBlum]

[AristosQueue (NI)]

CBlum: I honestly cannot imagine a scenario where such a primitive would be useful. It certainly doesn't seem common enough to warrant a primitive to accelerate the effort. Where do you imagine this primitive being used?

[CBlum]

If you load from a file, you have to convert the spreadsheet array of string into a cluster. Or you have a HMI, for example, "Multicolumn listbox" (array of string), then you're not always convert the value?

[AristosQueue (NI)]

I can see your rationale, but I would rank both of those as pretty rare, sufficiently so that I wouldn't consider it worthy of a language primitve. We'll see if it picks up kudos from other users, but my instinct is to decline the suggestion.

[tst]

Additional use case - selecting data from a database. You get a bunch of columns of different types which come in as variants and you want to convert them to specific types.

[Intaris]

Most databases these days offer interfaces to retrieve strict datatypes.....

[tst]

I'm not familiar with this. I know of SQL, which returns record sets, which in ADO are returned as variants or strings. How would something like this translate to LV?

Incidentally, it's certainly possible to do something along the lines of the various OpenG variant config VIs or JSON converters, etc., where you feed in a cluster and say "this 1D array of variants maps to this cluster", but that requires using such code and could have performance implications, so it might not be practical in all situations. It also doesn't imply any changes on the DB side.