quote:

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Originally posted by greg

The upper (old) part of the Set Column Values dialog only accepts an expression that returns a value as it loops over the row range designated by 'From' and 'To'.
The lower (new in Origin 8) part of the dialog - 'Before Formula Scripts' - can run anything you care to code and in some cases may be the only part of the dialog you will use.

It's not clear what you are trying to accomplish in Set Column Values, but here is an example that finds the mean of every four rows of values in column 1 and places the results in column 2 :

dataset ds1;
ds1 = col(1);
Size = ds1.GetSize();
BlockSize = 4;
range rd2 = col(2); // target column
for(RowIndex = 1; RowIndex < Size; RowIndex += BlockSize)
{
range rd1 = col(1)[$(RowIndex):$(RowIndex+BlockSize-1)];
sum(rd1);
rd2[1+(RowIndex-1)/BlockSize] = sum.mean;
}

The entire script resides in the "Before Formula Script" section and the expression section is empty.

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quote:

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Originally posted by cpyang

You can declare a range variable with the specified rows and use sum, like

int i1 = 2;
int i2 = 6;
range a=col(a)[$(i1):$(i2)];
sum(a);
sum.min=;
sum.N=;

thanks.

However, I just need to change one worksheet column through the "set column values" dialog. I guess it would be difficult to implement the function that you suggested in this dialog.

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int i1 = 2;
int i2 = 6;
range a=col(a)[$(i1):$(i2)];
sum(a);
sum.min=;
sum.N=;