How to pass a range into a custom function in Google Spreadsheets?

Question

I want to create a function which takes in a range... something like:

function myFunction(range) {
  var firstColumn = range.getColumn();
  // loop over the range
}

A cell would reference it using:

=myFunction(A1:A4)

The problem is that when I try doing this, the parameter seems like it is only passing the values to the function. Thus, I cannot use any of the Range methods such as getColumn(). When I attempt to do so, it gives the following error:

error: TypeError: Cannot find function getColumn in object 1,2,3.

How can I send an actual range rather than just the values to one of my custom functions?

Answer 1

range is treated as javascript's 2d array. You can get the number of rows with range.length and the number of columns with range[0].length. If you want to get the value from row r and column c use: range[r][c].