how do I Match fields with first char?

[J__]

I have layout which contains a listview of names

I put some buttons at the top like a phone book and added a find [A] for the A button, find for B button and so on.

I noticed that when I click the 'A' button, it finds not only names that begin with A, but names that have an A anywhere in the field. I really want to only find the names that Begin with A. in Perl it's ^A

I looked through the online help of filemaker, but did not see any mention of how to specify 'begins' with A

Regarding the approach above, is there an easier way to do this button / phone book lookup letter approach? For example, could I somehow get the text of the button, then pass that to a script, which will allow me to specify the letter in a find?

thanks for your help in advance,

sincerely,

J__

[RalphL]

What I have done in earlier versions is make a calculated field = Left(Name; 1) and use this as the search field.

[Lee Smith]

[color:"red"] Do Not Double Post in the Forum

[J__]

What do you mean by double post?

If i did double post this, then it was not intentional. I don't think i asked this qauestion anywhere else did I?

thanks,

J__

[Barbecue]

To find entries that begin with A, use

==A*

as the criterion.

This will find only items where A is the first character in the text. FileMaker searching is pretty weird when compared to regular expressions, but it's powerful once you learn the syntax.

[J__]

thanks Barbecue!

really appreciate it.

sincerely,

J__

[J__]

Uh Barbecue or anyone, the second part to my question was is there an easier way to do this then having to click , what 5 times, for each button to set the find option?

thanks,

J__

[-Queue-]

Are you asking if you need to have a separate script for each find? The answer to that would be no. You only need one script like

Allow User Abort [Off]

Set Error Capture [On]

Enter Find Mode [ ]

Set Field [yourfield; "==" & Get(ScriptParameter) & "*"]

Perform Find [ ]

If [not Get(FoundCount)]

Show Custom Dialog ["There are no records starting with " & Get(ScriptParameter) & "."]

Show All Records

End If

Each button should call the script and pass the appropriate letter to it.

[PCGMKTG]

Queue

I have tried to run this script and can manage to get it to say "There are no records starting with A" but that's it.

How do I "call the script and pass the appropriate letter to it"? I tried typing in an "A" in the optional script parameter section but it doesn't do anything.

Thanks