Using the ++ symbol at the beginning of a formula

Question

In the past days, I searched for a solution and found this formula (not related to the problem I had):

=+SORT(A:A;A:A="ab c";;A:A;1)

I was curious, and I checked this formula following the instructions of the guy who posted it to another forum where I can’t remember right now. The symbol +made the function SORTreturn only the first cell that matches the criteria.

But I want to know more about this setting of formulas with +, and if other operators can be used. Is it documented?

Answer 1

This is the equivalent of a unary plus , also available as UPLUSin Google Sheets. It is also equivalent to writing=0 + foo

, foo , , + arrayformula. +: , , . , .

array_constrain(array, num_rows, num_columns), . =+array, , , =array_constrain(array, 1, 1)