Suggestion for new Logical Operator: "IN"

[John_Zimmerman]

Greeting from beautiful Austin, Texas!

I’d like to suggest a new logical operator, “IN”. It would return true if any value matched the field.

It would look something like this:
IN({myTestField}, “text1”, "text2,…)
or
IN({myIntegerField}, 2001, 2002, 2003…)

This logical operation can currently be implemented with OR(), but can get pretty long if there are a lot of options.

Thanks!

[Bill_French]

John_Zimmerman:

IN({myIntegerField}, 2001, 2002, 2003…)

That could get you into trouble. Isn’t 2001 in 22,002,001?

[John_Zimmerman]

Hey, Bill. I would assume that the underlying software would look at the field type. For text fields (like single select) it would have to match the entire field.

For example, if( IN({myTextField}, “apples”, “pears”), “fruit”, “not fruit”)
would be equivalent to
IF( OR({myTextField}=“apples”, {myTextField}=“pears”), “fruit”, “not fruit”)

You can see how the OR could get pretty long.

[Bill_French]

@John_Zimmerman,

John_Zimmerman:

the underlying software would look at the field type

I suspected that’s what you may have had in mind, but the term “IN” suggests something very different than “EQ” or “CONTAINS”, or IndexOf().

I get it though - you want a more elegant way of knowing if a value is in a list of possible values. This has a good deal of relevance to array handling which is non-existent in Airtable.

In JavaScript, for example, IndexOf() returns the location in the array (string or list). If it doesn’t exist, it returns -1. In my view, to do this elegantly for both strings and numbers, we need array support. Without arrays, anywhere you go with this idea can get into the weeds semantically.

If Airtable adopts “IN” can we all agree that it’s synonymous with IndexOf()? :winking_face:

[Jeremy_Oglesby]

I have a generalized #product-suggestions post for new formula functions here:

New Formula Field Functions Product Suggestions

There are several requests floating around the forums related to the need/desire for more formula field functions - mostly related to arrays, linked records, or javascript like functionality. I’m going to create this #feature-requests post with some of the initial ones that I have posted myself, or have seen in the forums, and I will endeavor to keep it updated with new ones that I find or see posted; and, I will even endeavor to cross them off the list as Airtable implements them :wink: To ke…

where I address a couple other array-related functions that would be nice to have as well. An IN(value, array) function could be added as a reply to that post as well, if you felt like centralizing it with these other functions requested.