Excel BI - Excel Challenge 799

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🔰 Data Answer Expected constitution cotitution happiness haiess perception perception entertainment* entinme

Published

March 24, 2026

Illustration for Excel BI - Excel Challenge 799

Challenge Description

🔰 Data Answer Expected constitution cotitution happiness haiess perception perception entertainment* entinme

Solutions

library(tidyverse)
library(readxl)

path = "Excel/700-799/799/799 Remove Characters between 2 Asterisks.xlsx"
input = read_excel(path, range = "A1:A10")
test  = read_excel(path, range = "B1:B10")

strip_star_pairs = function(x) {
  while (str_detect(x, "\\*[^*]*\\*")) {
    x = str_replace(x, "\\*([^*]*)\\*", ~str_remove_all(.x, "[A-Za-z]+"))
  }
  str_remove_all(x, "\\*")
}

result = input %>%
  mutate(answer = map_chr(Data, strip_star_pairs))

all.equal(result$answer, test$`Answer Expected`)
# [1] TRUE

Logic: Read the workbook ranges needed for the challenge; Derive the required intermediate columns; Iterate through the sequence until the rule is satisfied.
Strengths: The algorithm is explicit about the sequence rule, so the control flow is easy to validate against the prompt.
Areas for Improvement: The solution assumes the workbook layout and selected ranges remain stable, so any structural change in the sheet would require small adjustments.
Gem: The non-obvious part is the local rule inside the loop, because that rule determines the whole output.

import pandas as pd
import re

path = "700-799/799/799 Remove Characters between 2 Asterisks.xlsx"
input = pd.read_excel(path, usecols="A", nrows=10)
test = pd.read_excel(path, usecols="B", nrows=10)

def strip_star_pairs(x):
    while True:
        m = re.search(r"\*[^*]*\*", x)
        if not m: break
        inner = re.sub(r"[A-Za-z]+", "", x[m.start()+1:m.end()-1])
        x = x[:m.start()] + inner + x[m.end():]
    return x.replace("*", "")

input['answer'] = input.iloc[:, 0].apply(strip_star_pairs)

print(input['answer'].equals(test['Answer Expected'])) # True

The Python version expresses the core extraction rule directly and keeps the pattern matching easy to review.

Difficulty Level

Medium / Hard

The challenge relies on a non-obvious iterative rule rather than a single straight aggregation.