"word" position

[bastrop_attitudes]

I'm trying to figure out how to tell if a word/phrase/text string is the 1st word/phrase/text string, 2nd or 3rd in a list. I need a number (1-3) returned. It's after midnight and my brain is spinning circles...everything i've tried returns me either text or the the character position. Help, is there a way?

Ginger

[Kevin Frank]

Check out the "PositionValue" CF by Geoff Wells.

http://www.briandunning.com/cf/62

If you have a list...

Apple

Banana

Pumpkin

...and you ask for the "PositionValue" of Banana, it will return 2.

[comment]

Your question is not quite clear. Assuming that by "list" you mean text items separated by carriage returns ("values" in Filemakerese), you can get the ordinal number of a given value in the list by:

ValueCount ( Left ( listOfValues ; Position ( ¶ & listOfValues & ¶ ; ¶ & searchValue & ¶ ; 1 ; 1 ) )

Note that this returns the "value position" of the FIRST occurrence of searchValue in listOfValues.

[bastrop_attitudes]

Thank you for such a quick response! You guys, make it looks so easy! It makes sense now, don't know why I couldn't pull that out last night...!

That is exactly what I needed AND it introduces me to a new function. I'm coming from FM5.5 and trying figure out some of the new (and old) functions. I haven't any experience with the "Let" fuction, but I like it! especially for testing out how other functions works...it keeps the other code cleaner ...it can get confusing quickly with nested functions. Thank you, again.

[bastrop_attitudes]

I knew there was something about the carriage returns (I didn't have/wasn't adding a carriage return to the beginning and the end of the list)! I just couldn't grasp what I needed to do. I had looked at all the functions you used, but not in that combination and I *just* couldn't get it last night!

Thanks for making it looks so easy! :