... Ok ummm... feel free to kill me for this... i have been working with filemaker for over 6 months now... and still have no idea what the point of a repeating field is... i just figure if it has a practical purpose it may be useful to know it...

Cheers, genx

They are a legacy feature from back before FileMaker had portals. If you wanted line items, you used repeating fields.

Now they are best used only for utility purposes, or specific cases where pidgeon-holing data is required.

Just do a search for [color:blue]Repeating Fields and user [color:blue] Soren and you will get a ear full about them.

Repeating fields were FileMaker's approach to Related data prior to v3. I think you will find that using a relationship a lot easier to develop in.

They still serve many purposes today, I use them graphics I use in my GUI.

Lee

lol, thanks guys

I use them for a special import trick. If you import a record with a repeating field it will burst a single source record into how ever many repetition are used, while duplication all other field.

(i.e. I have a list of travellers that require varying number of unique serialized luggage tags each)

Actually repeating fields were often misunderstood and misused in the early days of FM's minimalism. They are in fact VERY useful if you use them properly; i.e., like 1 dimensional arrays in which you have a clear or even fixed upper bound.

Just do a search for [color:blue]Repeating Fields and user [color:blue] Soren and you will get a ear full about them.

So the place didn't changed that much... :)

Edited February 3, 200620 yr by Guest

It ought to be said that I use them very often, but certainly not as the newbe thinks they must be utilized!!

--sd