Help with the wildcard *

[Taig McNab]

Hi all,

I've searched archives and can't find much to help with my problem:

I am building a database of tapes which all have unique ID numbers and am wondering if there is a way of automatically adding the * to a find. Many of the tapes have letters/numbers that could be ommitted when searching eg. IS1000394 - it would be easier just to search for 394.

So in short, is it possible to automatically add * to the beginning of a search?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Taig

[CobaltSky]

Hello Taig,

Welcome to the Forum!

There are various ways that you could go about solving your problem. One of them would be to provide a button for your users to use to activate the finds and attach it to a script which runs along the lines of:

If[Get(WindowMode) = 1]

Set Field [ tapeID; If(not IsEmpty(tapeID); "*" & tapeID) ]

Perform Find [Replace Found Set]

End If

This will, of course, only work if your users click the button rather than performing the find in the more conventional ways. If that's a problem, you could perhaps lock the database down (hide the Status Area and remove menu commands) and require that the whole find process be performed by script. Then yoiu have control and can ensure that users have no other way to perform the find.

Another thing you might want to consider is that if you have a lot of recoirds in your database, a wildcard search will not be very quick. In that case, an alternative method such as a special relationship (to a calculated field in the tapes table) and a global search field (with a 'go' button that activates a 'Go to Related Record' command via the special relationship) might be a better option.