Build Array of Contents in Variant

[paul_cardinale]

Is there an easy way to take a variant that might contain anything and output a variant that contains an array of that thing?

Build array won't work because it will yield {Array{Variant{Thing}}} and what I need is {Variant{Array{Thing}}}.

[RavensFan]

What kinds of "things" are you talking about?

The key point of arrays is that every element must be of the same type.  So if you want an Array{Thing}, then every Thing in that array must be the same type of Thing.

[Mark_Yedinak]

What about using variant attributes? They allow you to create arbitrary lists of anything.

[paul_cardinale]

Not "things", "thing".  The "thing" could be anything.  I have an incoming variant that might contain anything (I don't have any control over it).  I want to build an array of that "thing" and put it into a variant.

[RavensFan]

Since the thing is a variant, and you want to put an array of those "things" into a variant, it sounds like you want a Variant{Array{Variant}}.

[paul_cardinale]

---

@RavensFan wrote:

Since the thing is a variant, and you want to put an array of those "things" into a variant, it sounds like you want a Variant{Array{Variant}}.

---

Not quite.  The "thing" is not a variant, it is what is inside a variant.

Your code produces a variant of an array of variants of things.

I want a variant of an array of things.

[paul_cardinale · Accepted solution]

As happens not infrequently, the solution came to me as I was laying in bed waiting to fall asleep.

[paul_cardinale]

That usually works, but it gags if the "thing" is an array (because it tries to put an array in an array).

It should act like "Build Array", and if it gets an array as an input, just add another dimension.

Here's the fixed version:

Note: This doesn't pass any data along, it always outputs an empty array (for my I app, I only need the variant to contain type info).