Superficially, a stack may be thought of as a vertical collection of tables with tab labels shown vertically. An Excel workbook automatically imports as a stack, and a stack exports as an Excel workbook.
The vertical alignment of a stack allows one to think of it in a three-dimensional way. If all of the tab tables have the same structure (size and shape), the stack is called a “cube” and the processing into tabs can be viewed in three different ways, one for each dimension.
In Excelerate, go to ‘Help’ and click ‘begin tutorials’ Click on “Stacks and Cubes” and experiment with the actions – or
enter: dnld ‘a_1’
on any line
If multiple tables or even an entire folder of tables are imported, they come in as a stack.
The results of various computations can be combined into a stack.
Chosen rows, columns, of blocks of data from a table can be formed into a stack.
Any stack can be combined into a single table, vertically or horizontally, in various ways
In Excelerate, go to ‘Help’ and click ‘begin tutorials’ Click on “Stacks and Cubes” and experiment with the actions – or
enter: dnld ‘a_2’
on any line
First combine them into a stack. For example if there are three tables, say A, B, and T1, you would enter
combine (A;B;T1). Suppose the resulting stack is T5
Then the location of a table in the action is replaced by “T1”. The action then applies to all three tables and returns the corresponding stack of results.
A similar process will work on any stack, however produced.
In Excelerate, go to ‘Help’ and click ‘begin tutorials’ Click on “Stacks and Cubes” and experiment with the actions – or
enter: dnld ‘a_3’
on any line
Select the desired column, then break it at a space character. If the table is “nms” and the column is 1, the following action set will work
fetch file (this will let you find and bring in the table and you can choose the specified name)
break nms at ‘ ‘ (space between quotes)
Download an exploratory action set for this using the command
dnld ‘a_4’
on any line
