Nth term of an array formula

[Phox]

What is the simplest way to get an array formula to return the integer that represents its index? IE, I have an array {John,apple,4,TRUE,7} and I want {1,2,3,4,5} to be the result. Previously, I had been using MATCH(RANGE,RANGE) to obtain this but it backfired when some of the elements in the array were identical. In that case {John,apple,John,TRUE,apple} returns {1,2,1,4,2}. What's the simplest way around this?

 

[sanrv1f]

could you tell us what you are trying to achieve with some sample data?? Its hard to imagine the situation from your explanation

 

[Phox]

I was intentionally trying to generalize so the issue would be simpler and clearer, but the most recent application where I wanted this was in this thread. In this particular case, we were trying to sort a list of names based on their baseball statistics. It's fairly trivial if none of the statistics were the same, but preserving name order when statistics were the same required the knowledge of its relative location in the array.

 

[Phox]

OK, I figured out a way, but if someone can think of a simpler, shorter answer please share.

DATA is a defined range.

{=ROW(DATA)-MIN(IF(DATA=INDEX(DATA,1),ROW(DATA),""))+1}