Merge function usage with dynamic list

What is the intended outcome? And, why do you "need" to use the merge function?

Hi Stefan,

The intended outcome is merge({ 1, 2, 3 }, { "asdf", 5, 6 }, { 7, 8 }), somehow using local!a.b variable.

The use case is to build a table with columns local!a.a and dynamic rows based on combination of local!a.b

I still do not have a clear idea what the final output of this operation should look like. Your input data structure is:

{
  { a: 1, b: { 1, 2, 3 } },
  { a: 2, b: { "asdf", 5, 6 } },
  { a: 1, b: { 7, 8 } }
}

Now, what is the output?

I guess, this is you are looking for - 

a!localVariables(
  local!a: {
    { a: 1, b: { 1, 2, 3 } },
    { a: 2, b: { "asdf", 5, 6 } },
    { a: 1, b: { 7, 8 } }
  },
  a!forEach(
    items: local!a,
    expression: fv!item.b
  )
)

Hi Stefan, 

Apologies for the misunderstanding, I am looking for the following merged output but using the variable local!a.b and not the values.

Hi Tushar,

Thank you for your response. However,

I am looking for the output {{1, "asdf", 7}, {2, 5, 8}, {3, 6, null}} and not the result of foreach

In that case, this will work for you - 

a!localVariables(
  local!a: {
    { a: 1, b: { 1, 2, 3 } },
    { a: 2, b: { "asdf", 5, 6 } },
    { a: 1, b: { 7, 8 } }
  },
  a!forEach(
    items: enumerate(count(local!a.b)) + 1,
    expression: a!localVariables(
      local!index: fv!item,
      a!forEach(
        items: local!a.b,
        expression: if(
          local!index > count(fv!item),
          "",
          fv!item[local!index]
        )
      )
    )
  )
)

stackoverflow.com/.../how-to-ask

merge() does not work here as it requires the individual lists to be separate parameters instead of a list of lists.

Yeah this looks like a good outcome! For what it's worth, since a!forEach() came out, I have entirely stopped using the merge() function. You can generally achieve anything you needed to from merge() with a!forEach(), and a!forEach() is much easier to debug or set up complex logic.