Newbie Question, any ideas?

[erk]

Hello, I'm totally new to filemaker (I'm used to perl and php)

and I have a task which needs to be performed to an export from filemaker

and ideally without having to take the results of the export and writing a new script to parse the data.

Ideally, I'd like the report to come directly from filemaker as specified below...

say for example the database has records like...

1 | John Doe | 237

2 | Jane May | 479

3 | Jack Lee | 589

and I want to do an export from filemaker, while performing actions on the return, so that it's export looks like...

1 | John Doe | 237

2 | John Doe | -237

3 | Text |

4 | Jane May | 479

5 | Jane May | -479

6 | Text |

7 | Jack Lee | 589

8 | Jack Lee | -589

9 | Text |

so what it's doing is selecting each record

but before exporting each column, it produces two additional lines of info before the next record (a line mimicking the original line, although with a negative number value and a new line with some static text)

I know how this could be done with perl, php, or other scripting languages

where you could select * from the database

and while it's returning the rows, you could insert two other lines of data within the loop

but I'm not sure how Filemaker works, or if such a query would be possible

any ideas?

thanks in advance!

[Lee Smith]

I need some clarification on your structure I think.

Are these separate fields now in separate records now? I see three records and three fields in your first example. Is there any significance to the pipe "|", or are you just using it here to show field separation? Meaning, is this:

1 | John Doe | 237

2 | Jane May | 479

3 | Jack Lee | 589

Really:

1 John Doe 237

or,

Record 1

Field 1 = 1

Field 2 = John Doe

Field 3 = 237

Lee

[CoZiMan]

Straightforward answer, yes.

Use a calculation in a field.

The text operations allow for manipulation of all the information contained in other fields.

You could generate everything in one field and just export that field.

(

RecNum has to be an autoentered serial number stepping +3

Name is Name

ItemNumber is the value to shift

"StaticText" is where you place the static text.

)

For example:

RecNum & " | " & Name & " | " & ItemNumber & "