addcol-expr and rename?

[halloleo]

I use addcol-expr a lot, but one thing I notced is the the default names are always oretty unwieldy. E.g. when I do:

='' if visibleCols[1].getValue(row)==visibleCols[2].getValue(row) else visibleCols[2].getValue(row)

the column name is '' if visibleCols[...

Of course I then change the name with ^, but I wanted to ask, whether there is a way to add a column and give it a name in one operation...

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PS: I am just starting to use record and play which is extermely promising!

[saulpw]

Hey @halloleo, I think this would be a useful feature too, and I had an idea for this syntax (not implemented yet): <identifier>=<expr> which would use <expr> for the column expr but <identifier> for the column name. What do you think about this idea?

[halloleo]

Great you think this would be an improvement. However, I don't understand the syntax you suggest. "=" is already the reserved key binding for addcol-expr as it is used now, right?

[saulpw]

Sorry, I had angle brackets in the comment which were being turned into HTML. Fixed now in the comment above. The idea is that you'd type =foo=n+1 and the first = would invoke addcol-expr, and then the input would be foo=n+1 which would name the column foo while giving it the expression n+1.

[halloleo]

Got it. Sounds great!

I think the two equal signs are reasonably intuitive and it is backward compatible with the current syntax (where you have only one equal sign).

[jazzabeanie]

You could make 'new column expr=' editable and if it is changed it sets the name for the column. Eg, I press =, then I see
new column expr=, then I backspace and change it to new_column='some_expr'. This then creates a new column with the name 'new_column'.

[jcmkk3]

You could make 'new column expr=' editable and if it is changed it sets the name for the column. Eg, I press =, then I see new column expr=, then I backspace and change it to new_column='some_expr'. This then creates a new column with the name 'new_column'.

This is kind of how PowerBI does it and it seems pretty intuitive. If you click to create a new measure, then you get this:

You could decide to just leave the generic name or rename it to make more sense.

If you already had a measure named Measure, then it would have offered the default measure name as Measure 2 instead.