Splitter.SplitTextByRanges

Splitter

Returns a splitter function that extracts substrings from text at specified {offset, length} ranges.

Syntax

Splitter.SplitTextByRanges(ranges as list, optional startAtEnd as nullable logical) as function

Parameters

Name	Type	Required	Description
`ranges`	`list`	Yes	A list of two-element lists {offset, length}, each specifying a zero-based start position and character count for a segment.
`startAtEnd`	`logical`	No	When true, offsets are measured from the end of the string. Defaults to false.

Return Value

function — A function that extracts substrings from text according to the list of {offset, length} pairs.

Remarks

Splitter.SplitTextByRanges returns a splitter function that extracts non-contiguous or overlapping portions of a text value based on {offset, length} pairs. Each range specifies where to start (zero-based offset) and how many characters to take.

Unlike Splitter.SplitTextByPositions (which splits at cut points) or Splitter.SplitTextByLengths (which takes consecutive segments), this function allows arbitrary, possibly non-adjacent ranges. Ranges may overlap or leave gaps between them.

This is useful when dealing with fixed-width formats where only specific columns are needed, or when fields are interspersed with padding characters that should be skipped.

Examples

Example 1: Extract two non-adjacent ranges

Splitter.SplitTextByRanges({{0, 3}, {5, 4}})("ABCDE12345")

Result

	Result
1	ABC,2345

Example 2: Extract named fields from a fixed-width record

let
    record = "SMITH     JOHN      1985",
    splitter = Splitter.SplitTextByRanges({{0, 10}, {10, 10}, {20, 4}}),
    parts = splitter(record)
in
    parts

Applied Steps

The final output — a list of the three extracted range segments from the fixed-width record.

	Result
1	SMITH ,JOHN ,1985

Example 3: Use with Table.SplitColumn

Table.SplitColumn(
    #table({"Data"}, {{"ABCXYZ"}}),
    "Data",
    Splitter.SplitTextByRanges({{0, 3}, {3, 3}}),
    {"Part1", "Part2"}
)