This equation parses a string of integers.  The same code can be applied to a list of real numbers.

This allows you to output a long list of data from one equation and then use it in another equation.  This will accept any string composed of numbers you input to it.

Once it parses the string into an array of numbers it offers you several choices that you can select for basic methods you can apply to the array of numbers:

• list -- just write them out
• add -- sum the numbers
• product - multiply the numbers
• avg - average the numbers

A parser example

This is intended to be the precursor code for parsing an input String.  Today we can only input an enum, which enters our Groovy code as a String.  This parser will help take in a long list of numbers once we have a regular String input.

The coded for this is very simple to take the input String (list of numbers white space separated) and convert it to an array of numbers.  Here's the relevant code:

     def String inStr = args.inStr
     def strSplit = inStr.split()
     def cntr = strSplit.size()

     def A = []
     for (int i = 0; i < cntr; i++) {
        A[i] = strSplit[i].toInteger()  
     }

So, the .split()¹  method completes the parsing for us.  It generates an array of Strings, each segment of which is the segments of the string separated by white space.

The A variable refers to a list and we feed each element of the strSplit array of Strings, while converting each segment String to integers in this case.

Using this equation

You can use this equation as an EiE inside another equation where you want to produce a long list and then do something as simple as average, sum or multiply a list of numbers of arbitrary length.

You can also duplicate this equation and add a new method to perform some other function on the input list of numbers.

1. ^ http://docs.groovy-lang.org/latest/html/api/org/codehaus/groovy/runtime/StringGroovyMethods.html#split%28java.lang.CharSequence%29