are permutations possible?

[Seth Hunter]

I read in an article that Excel is capable of converting
character string representations of potentially
overlapping permutation cycles and returning a
concatenated product. It is important that the product be
disjoint. In addition to doing this I need to be able to
multiply the disjoint cycles.

Is this truly possible???

 

[Harlan Grove]

I read in an article that Excel is capable of converting
character string representations of potentially
overlapping permutation cycles and returning a
concatenated product. It is important that the product be
disjoint. In addition to doing this I need to be able to
multiply the disjoint cycles.

Is this truly possible???

The correct answer is 'yes, but . . .'

Excel provides the building blocks necessary to do this, but so do a few other
languages/products. There's no built-in functionality to support this in Excel,
and it'd be painful to write it from scratch.

So it's possible, but you'd be well-advised exploring other alternatives (e.g.,
Mathematica) first.