I feel compelled to write this message for few reasons:
1-A lot was said about my good friend, case(), all of which were well intended and sincere, but unfortunately UNTRUE.
2-I like case(): it's a great function, simple, straight-forward and very efficient.
3-Quite possible, a lot of people were stopped short in their tracks by those so called limits on case() and they are doing themselves a disservice: See these threads:
Another Problem
Expression Help
The fact of the matter is, you CANNOT tell ahead of time what the limits on case() are, you could only guess.
In the first thread I referenced, a debated ensued about what the limits are. Some said the limits are 16 pairs, other said it was more, or less. That seemed odd and illogical to me: what would cause these limitations? and why that specific number?
So, I went for it: here are the results of my experimentations:
1-I created a case function and used 25 pairs: it works !! I doubled that number to 50, still works !!! I kept going until I hit 200, and yes, it still works !!!
2-In the first experiment, I used very simple conditions. It seemed that with these conditions, you could at least use 200 and quite possibly a lot more. Then I started to use more and more complex conditions, and as I expected, the number of pairs were inversely proportionate to the complexity of the conditions.
I concluded from the above that, it is not simply the number of the pairs alone that determines the limits but rather the number and the complexity, and quite possibly, coupled with other factors such as your own machine's RAM and CPU, and other hardware specifications that would determine how far you could take this function.
As you can see, there is no way you can predict these limits in advance so, do not let these limits scare you away from a great function.
Gabe
1-A lot was said about my good friend, case(), all of which were well intended and sincere, but unfortunately UNTRUE.
2-I like case(): it's a great function, simple, straight-forward and very efficient.
3-Quite possible, a lot of people were stopped short in their tracks by those so called limits on case() and they are doing themselves a disservice: See these threads:
Another Problem
Expression Help
The fact of the matter is, you CANNOT tell ahead of time what the limits on case() are, you could only guess.
In the first thread I referenced, a debated ensued about what the limits are. Some said the limits are 16 pairs, other said it was more, or less. That seemed odd and illogical to me: what would cause these limitations? and why that specific number?
So, I went for it: here are the results of my experimentations:
1-I created a case function and used 25 pairs: it works !! I doubled that number to 50, still works !!! I kept going until I hit 200, and yes, it still works !!!
2-In the first experiment, I used very simple conditions. It seemed that with these conditions, you could at least use 200 and quite possibly a lot more. Then I started to use more and more complex conditions, and as I expected, the number of pairs were inversely proportionate to the complexity of the conditions.
I concluded from the above that, it is not simply the number of the pairs alone that determines the limits but rather the number and the complexity, and quite possibly, coupled with other factors such as your own machine's RAM and CPU, and other hardware specifications that would determine how far you could take this function.
As you can see, there is no way you can predict these limits in advance so, do not let these limits scare you away from a great function.
Gabe
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