My head is splitting

Because I'm smacking myself for not exploring new features more. Ok, admittedly, I'm a creature of habit. I sometimes just go on using Tableau from release to release without delving into the cool new features soon enough. This is unfortunate because some of those features really save you some time. For example, when Tableau 9.0 first came out, I knew there were a ton of new features to check out. But days, weeks, and months of nose down work kept me from exploring. One of those new features is the custom split function. When I first discovered this new menu item, I also discovered that Bora Beran blogged about it before 9.0 even came out. I have to say, as long as this feature has been out, I actually feel kind of silly blogging about this.

For simplifying complex strings like path names, I've traditionally done such non-sense as this:

This, of course, can be very tedious and not very dynamic.


With the split function it's now as easy as using the pill menu and selecting custom split from the transform option, like this:

Enter custom delimiter and position:

And Voila!!  A brand new field is born.

A side-by-side comparison reveals that this is not only more precise but as is also very dynamic (see the new items?).  I've highlighted the delimiter that Tableau used to create the split.  

And just look how much cleaner and neater to new calc is:

Just makes you feel much better about yourself as a developer...doesn't it?

Very nice.  I'm finding myself being increasingly thankful to the Tableau Dev team.  Well done! .... and thank you for the gift of time :-) .

Thoughts?