Hi Guys,

This is my first post here so forgive me if im not in the right topic or something.

I'm fairly new to scripting and I was wondering if anyone could help me out with my little problem. I am trying to make some sort of Quality Assurance script in which I have a list of people. I am wanting to catch all the typos that were entered. When my list is sorted alphabetically my script will go down to the next entry and verify that it is the same as the above entry. If it is different in any way the script stops and lets me take a look at why they are different. I was wondering if I could somehow add anything to my script for it to highlight how the new entry is different from the last. Is this even possible im FM?

Here is what my script looks like.

Loop

Set Variable[$First_Person; Value:Level1::persons]

Go to Record/Request/Page [Next; Exit after Last]

Set Variable[$Last_Person; Value:Level1::persons]

Exit Loop If[$Last_Person [Not Equal] $First_Person]

End Loop

If I understand you correctly, you have text in two script variables: $Last_Person and $First_Person.

You want FileMaker to give you a specific analysis of why these two values are not equal.

This sounds like a challenging calculation. I'm pretty sure that it can be done using a recursive custom function.

It can also be done using a FileMaker script loop where you loop over all of the characters in the first string and compare them to the second one. This is an easier task than a custom function, but it can be slower to execute.

And there is always the solution of doing the specific task outside of FileMaker with a third-party tool (plug-in, OS-level scripting, etc.). My first choice would be to run the strings through the external program 'diff'.

Which approach is more reasonable depends on the data you are applying it to.

How many records are going to be compared?

What is the length of the strings that will be compared?

There is an additional issue that may make the problem even harder. Do you want to know about only the first difference that is found or do you need to have a detailed list of all differences between the two strings?

Edited October 4, 201015 yr by Guest