Comparing array values in Google Apps script

Question

I feel that the following two functions should produce the same result, but function bob() never finds name1 equal to name2 , even though the names in those cells are indeed equal.

The function bob2() works fine, but I'm trying to speed things up by using arrays.

function bob() 
{
  var ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet();
  var name1 ;
  var name2 ;
  var AthName = ss.getRange(1,2,30).getValues();

  for (var xx=1; xx<30 ;xx++)
  {
    name1=AthName[xx]
    name2=AthName[xx+1]
  //name1 never equals name2 here. 
    if (name1==name2) ss.getRange(xx,10).setValue(name2);
  }
}


function bob2() 
{
  var ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet();
  var name1 ;
  var name2 ;

  for (var xx=1; xx<30 ;xx++)
  {
    name1 = ss.getRange(xx,2).getValue();
    name2 = ss.getRange(xx+1,2).getValue();
  //name1 does equal name2 here as expected.
    if (name1==name2) ss.getRange(4+xx,10).setValue(name2);
  }
}

What's wrong with bob() ?

Answer 1

The problem with bob() is that you're setting AthName to a two-dimensional list of values:

var AthName = ss.getRange(1,2,30).getValues();

Range.getValues() always returns a two-dimensional list indexed by row and column.

This means that you're assigning lists to name1 and name2 :

name1=AthName[xx]
name2=AthName[xx+1]

Lists are equal only when they're the same list, ie , the variables refer to the same memory location. So name1 == name2 is going to be false no matter what the lists contain.

The fix is probably evident to you by now. Retrieve the value from each row:

name1 = AthName[xx][0];
name2 = AthName[xx+1][0];

(I've added spaces and semicolons for the sake of good JavaScript style.)