Find bug? (with periods like "YY_MM")

[TheLagosChap]

Hi,

I'm experiencing a rather weird behavior which I can't explain so far, hopefully sombedy out there can help.

I have a text field containing "month periods", with the content formatted as YY_MM, like:

07_01 for January 2007

07_02 for February 2007

etc

I'm trying a very simple "Find" on that field with something like:

">07_05" to give me all periods after May 2007.

This returns 07_08, 07_09, 07_10 etc but NOT 07_06 or 07_07.

I've tried to:

- find with the condition >"07_05" (with quotes)

- recover the file

- optimise and compress the file

Nothing makes a difference.

Obviously, if I add a calculated field in that table with the same condition (>07_05) it correctly returns true (or 1) for values like 07_06 nd 07_07.

Other similar finds (like <07_06) return also some similarly wrong results.

I've even tried to create a new database document from scratch with only one table and one field like this, I get exactly the same wrong find results!!!

The same (apparently wrong) behavior happens on a local 8.5 Advanced and on 8.0 server (both on Mac OS X).

Either it's a bug or I'm really missing something big.

Any clue or confirmation of this bug will help me staying away from a mental institution.

:-)

Thx,

TheLagosChap.

[comment]

Difficult to explain - it has to do with the field being text and "07_##" being two separate words. Note that it only finds records where at least one of the words meets the condition on its own.

You could replace the underscore with a period, or - preferably - move to another method altogether.

[TheLagosChap]

I think I understand what you mean.

"_" would be some kind of "operator" influencing the search result.

It's just weird/sad it's not in the popup list of symbols.

I'm going to use another way then.

But thanks a lot for the hint. You saved me from the mental institution :-)

[comment]

"_" would be some kind of "operator" influencing the search result.

No, not at all. It's a word delimiter. Filemaker, when searching for text, searches for individual words. If you were searching for >C, it would find "Adam Digby". OTOH, a period, when placed between two digits, is NOT a word delimiter.

Well, I said it was difficult to explain...

Edited May 24, 2007 by Guest