RFC - New Calculation Function Ideas

[comment]

I see - you want to generalize what we talked about re SumIf() and CountIf(). I'm not saying it wouldn't be at all useful - but it seems to me that if we had SumIf() and CountIf() we could solve all but the most esoteric problems, so I can't really see the cost/benefit in this.

I don't quite understand your example: if Parent-to-Student is one-to-many, then orphaned students are those with empty foreign key field. If it's the other way round, you could count non-orphaned students by counting the values in:

FilterValues ( List ( Student::StudentID ) ; List ( Parent::StudentID ) )

[The Shadow]

Yes, quite good. I suspect Parent/Student would normally be two-to-many, but the same trick would work on the join table I think.

I'm not saying it wouldn't be at all useful - but it seems to me that if we had SumIf() and CountIf() we could solve all but the most esoteric problems, so I can't really see the cost/benefit in this.

You're correct, what I am trying for was a generic way to allow aggregations to be performed.

I suspect these:

  • Product()

  • GCD()

  • RootMeanSquare()

are too esoteric to get there own built-in functions from FileMaker.

And, as of yet we don't have a CountIf(), SumIf(), Mode() or Median(), so I was thinking about if there is a way this could all be helped by the existence of a single new function.

[Raybaudi]

* Self should work in scripts and, most of all, custom functions.

Self must have optional parameteres, so that:

Self ( "content" ) is the same of Self

but we can than have:

Self ( "source" ) or Self ( "name" )

Self ( "comment" )

Self ( "layoutObjectName" )

and so on...

The most needed, for me, is SelfName

[comment]

If Self would return the name, I believe you could get all the other parameters using existing functions, e.g. GetField (Self), or FieldComment( Get(FileName ; Self ).

[The Shadow]

Yes, I agree that's the way to go, I doubt "Self" could be changed now, but SelfName or a similar function could be added to fix the issue.

[Raybaudi]

SelfName is a perfect choose, for now... I can't wait a second more !

Do you think that it's possible to have this "little" thing in 9.0v3 ?

[The Shadow]

I don't think FileMaker ever adds features in v-revs. To do so is an accounting headache in the US, since you cannot legally 'recognize' the sales of a product you are still adding features to, AFAIK.

[Thomas Seidler]

Hey guys,

I know this is an old school post, but only one i found that contained a discussion of multi-dimensional arrays. For those that can be bothered to install 30 custom functions, i've made some pretty substantial list and dict tools (behaviour compliant with python standards). So for those still looking for multidimensional array/list/dict custom functions:

List Dict Custom Function article & demo

a wee gift back to the FMP community. Though only the lunatic fringe will be using it... Tis powerful though!

T