symbols in value lists

[nathomalie]

hello,

i hope this topic hasn't been covered yet, but i can't find a solution for my problem:

i am a student and I have made a database.

for a lot of text fields I use value lists like this:

big (>10)

normal (5-10)

small (<5)

when i try to find al the records with "small (<5)" there aren't any records found, while there are a lot of record like that.

is there a problem with the "< "symbol in the values?

the strange thing is that the values with ">" do return results.

i don't understand what the problem could be, can anyone help me?

thank you very much!

[LiveOak]

I was able to get this error sometimes, but not always. On my first attempt the error occurred, but then went away. I think the problem went away when the field indexed itself. Try setting the text field to "Indexed" and changing the indexing language from "English" to "ASCII".

-bd

[Kurt Knippel]

quote:

---

Originally posted by nathomalie:

...I use value lists like this:

big (>10)

normal (5-10)

small (<5)

when i try to find al the records with "small (<5)" there aren't any records found, while there are a lot of record like that.

is there a problem with the "< "symbol in the values?

the strange thing is that the values with ">" do return results.

---

Mathematical symbols like "<" have meaning to Filemaker as mathematical operators. You will not really have any problems indexing them, as they are normal ASCII characters, but you will encounter problems with Finds, Sorts and other Filemaker functionality since they are recognized as mathematical and logical operators.

I would suggest avoiding the use of them and your problems will most likely go away.

[nathomalie]

thank you for the help!

i found a (not so elegant) solution for my problem by putting "" around the items in my value list.

i just don't understand why the program can't find the records, because i look for them by using a drop-down menu ,i'm searching in text fields and the records with ">" in them do work???!.

but anyway, it works like this, so it wil do